Review of Iris Van Herpen Fall 2021 Couture Fashion Show
Plastic Waste Gradient Dyed and Hand Stitched into Empyrean Dress Celebrating the Blue Earth and Pushing the Boundaries of Couture
By Long Nguyen
Ever since Iris van Herpen started to show her first haute couture work, ‘Chemical Crows’, in 2007 at Amsterdam Fashion Week, the Dutch designer has been at the forefront singlehandedly of merging new technology with traditional craftsmanship. Van Herpen’s 3D printed ‘Crystallization’ dress shown in 2010 was the first deployment of 3D printing methods to create these clothes working with the Belgian company Materialise.
That crystal dress mimicked the forms and shapes of the transition stage of water from liquid to ice. In contrast, another black dress with white laser cut sharp mesh fringes from the Spring 2013 collection ‘Voltage’ came from collaborative work with the artist Carlos Van Camp exploring the idea of clothes affected by the body’s electricity.
I want to give new meaning to couture – give it relevance in the age of technology. I see couture as the laboratory of the bigger picture for fashion, and I aim to show couture is not about yesterday. I hope to make haute couture the engine of progress in our rapidly changing digital age.
– Iris Van Herpen
The designer harnessed the thinking and approach of a range of artists across multiple disciplines, including architects and musicians, to be involved in defining a garment. Beyond the basic aged old premises, Van Herpen and these artists pushed haute couture into the realm of experimentation and further expanding the boundary of fashion with new forms and new meanings.
Van Herpen’s Spring 2021 haute couture collection titled Earthrise is no different from the precedent collections she presented in Paris for over just a decade now. She conjured the exploration of the blue planet earth as the center of focus.
These nineteen looks Fall 2021 couture collection offered a narrative of the artisanal and organic craftsmanship circular process that is the heart of haute couture. The designer related how the astronauts of the Apollo 8 spacecraft, the first with a crew to witness the Earth rising from the side of the moon as a boundless blue body organic object of oneness, with none of the conflicts and hierarchies prevalent in today’s life.
That historic moment was also one providing a platform for a change of perspective. It was a shift from the anthropocentric perspective to one where the emotion of this vast expanse and the magnificence of the Earth viewed from afar. Van Herpen developed this idea of an emotional look at the Earth, working with the champion skydiver, Domitille Kiger, to foster the intricate handwork marble dress of thousands of blue spheres in color gradients with the twist and turn of sky choreography.
Masha Vasyukova shot the short film shot at the majestic Dolomite mountain range in the Italian Alps. The director captured the soft long marble dress floated in the blue sky carrying the duality of the softness of the sheer fabrics and the toughness of the construction against the harsh elements.
Van Herpen’s lean close to the body signature dresses come this season with shoulder panels and flare sleeves like a long black dress with embroidery pattern. Or a long white dress with cut-out pattern cape and layering folds of wave panels trims or a short dress with light violet tessellated scale decoration embroidery. New are the white zig-zag white jumpsuit or another black chiffon jumpsuit with white painted pattern and a long back train.
Each dress or jumpsuit is a laborious process of techniques merging older handiwork sewing and cutting methods coupled with laser cutting in applying the new ways to create these distinctive garments in such a synergy that it is hard to segregate the old from the new. Intricate linework layered the scale imagery of the white/black trim to produce the asymmetry pattern of life like fish scales in this short dress. The Kiger fly blue dress is on its own a challenge for Van Herpen’s couture craftsmanship and technology.
The Aerology jumpsuit dress is a hand-casted pearl silicone laser cut to interlace the bodice in meteorological labyrinths in a draped transparent black organza mantle. The Magnetosphere dress, in collaboration with the artist Rogan Brown, is a relief sculpture dress made from the accretion of multiple hand-cut and laser-cut layers of Parley plastic hand-stitched to the bodice with torn layers of fabrics to mimic the movement of plant growth. The Earthrise blue dress is a kaleidoscope of thousands of gradient-dyed spheres and hand-stitched into this elaborate but flowing dress.
Surprisingly, one standout dress is the long organza dyed colorful flare dress with a sharp cut neckline and curvy short sleeves. This Mythosphere gown is hand-dyed in gradient indigo violet chiffon draped over cut-out tailored bodice and pleated to float crosscut with dramatic shoulder rigid constructions.
In a continuation work with visual artists, the Icelandic artist James Merry made the Zygoma embroidered finger and facemask glass sculpture in sterling silver and copper in one continuous metal strain. The French-British paper sculpture artist contributed to a white leaf layering laser-cut snow pattern dress, and the kinetic and sculpture artist Casey Curan worked on the long white dress with cape and panels trims.
As Van Herpen has done with previous collections, she continues her work with Parley for the Oceans to raise awareness of the fragility of the ocean, crafting the Skydive dress with plastics made from upcycled debris by Parley’s Global Cleanup Network.
This fall 2021 couture collection is a continuation of the discourse Van Herpen had started more than a decade ago when she brought her idea of couture to the main stage in Paris in an attempt to shift the accepted view of what couture is today.
The Dutch designer aids the rejuvenation of haute couture in Paris, enticing younger designers to experiment with this form of fashion and to change how a new generation will come to see and experience couture. And, this young generation must see couture designed by younger designers who are their peers.