This Artist Creates Clothes That Are Part Sculpture, Pure Poetry

Iris Van Herpen’s clothing is so much more than just fashion; it’s art in motion. Her designs seem more at home in a museum than on an ordinary person. Her technique involves making dresses from a myriad of materials, such as, umbrella tines, resin and magnets. Unlike most designers, she doesn’t sketch her work before creating them, but prefers to let the materials she uses dictate how the final piece will be. In a report to the Wired, she said “Each technique and each material asks for another approach and process, and that’s what challenges me, to find new ways of thinking and doing.” Each work is created through collaborations with computer programmers, biologists, and material scientists.

Van Herpen’s work is otherwordly, often reflected in the way her clothes often look like exoskeletons of aliens. She’s experimented with 3-d printing and thermoplastic polyurethane printing to achieve her drapes. Also, it should be mentioned that one of her recent shows included resident bad-ass Gwendoline Christie, of Game of Thrones fame, so if that doesn’t sell you, we don’t know what will. Her work often reads like architecture more than fashion at times. On her website she writes that her fashion “is an expression of art that is very close related to me and to my body. I see it as my expression of identity combined with desire, moods and cultural setting. In all my work I try to make clear that fashion is an artistic expression, showing and wearing art, and not just a functional and devoid of content or commercial tool.”