Iris Van Herpen: Get To Know The Dutch Designer’s Ethos, Collaborations And Celebrity Fans

Fashion-philes in Singapore, heads up: there’s a new fashion exhibition landing in town, and it’s one worth visiting. Making its debut in Asia at the ArtScience Museum is “Iris Van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses”, an exhibition that aims to celebrate the Dutch fashion designer Iris Van Herpen and her eponymous label.

Part of the museum’s season of exploring human experiences, the exhibition will run from 15 March through till 10 August, and offers visitors an intimate experience with these rarefied creations as they get to inspect each painstaking detail up close.

Iris Van Herpen might not be a household name in the same way that other marquee fashion houses are, yet her creations are boundlessly imaginative and showcase the very best of craftsmanship and ideas that sit at an intersection between traditional techniques and futuristic technology.

The exhibition is Van Herpen’s first solo exhibition in Asia, and spreads across nine themed rooms that range from water-themed pieces to rooms inspired by growth systems and outer space. Beyond clothing, the exhibition also brings in a variety of artwork and fossils that are millions of years old, and these rare manuscripts and artifacts are presented as a dialogue between Van Herpen’s work and the world we live in.

So before you get your tickets and make a museum day out of it, here’s what you should know about the fashion designer and her work.

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She’s a pioneer in fusing couture with technology

From the beginning of her brand in 2007, Van Herpen rejected traditional garment-making techniques in favour of innovative materials and processes. The designer has employed everything from the likes of 3D printing and laser cutting using soundwaves as part of her design process. This has allowed her designs to blur the line between fashion and sculpture, often exploring movement, fluidity, and organic forms.

Plus, as a member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, she’s one of the few designers pushing couture beyond embroidery and handcraft, making it a laboratory for the future of clothing.

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Nature plays a big role in her work too

It’s easy to assume that all this talk about machines means hard lines and tech-ish clothing. At her core, Van Herpen’s aesthetic is deeply rooted in biomimicry, which is the idea of imitating natural structures and processes. This has translated into collections that sometimes reference the microscopic world, deep-sea life, or the cosmos.

Growing up in Netherlands in a small town situated between two rivers, Van Herpen tells us that she spent her childhood in nature and this has informed the work that she creates today. “Fashion sits in a wider world, and interacts with environment, nature, technology and so on”, Van Herpen said at a press conference.

Van Herpen has a way of transforming abstract scientific ideas into wearable art, and while she employs futuristic techniques like 3D printing, the brand is also known for the unique materials she uses as her way of keeping clothing sustainable—ranging from metallic foils to biodegradable fabrics.

Yes, A-Listers love her

Van Herpen’s designs are a red-carpet favourite for celebrities who want to make an artistic statement. After all, she’s not producing another basic black gown that’s been worn a million times before. Beyoncé has worn her sculptural pieces in the past, with her most recent Iris Van Herpen moment during her Renaissance tour. Zendaya, Björk, Tilda Swinton and Lady Gaga are some of the other celebrities who have worn the brand’s futuristic designs for red carpet appearances.

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Collabs are a big thing for her

These aren’t your run-of-the-mill collabs, mind you. With everything Van Herpen does, there’s a sense of cerebral respect to it. For a couture show in 2019, she worked with artist Anthony Howe to create dresses inspired by his kinetic sculptures. The partnership extended onto the runway as a giant moving art piece framed models whilst they strutted the runway.

She has also collaborated with BMW to explore the intersection of fashion and automotive design, and with Magnum on a sustainable, edible couture concept.

Fashion that’s primed for the future

Van Herpen isn’t just about making beautiful clothes. Her work often challenges our perceptions of materiality, movement, and even the role of fashion itself. She’s one of the few designers actively integrating sustainable innovation into couture, using biodegradable materials and pioneering new ways of creating textiles. Van Herpen’s modus operandi is to have us question how garments interact with the body and the environment, and provokes us to consider how we can collectively push the boundaries of what we consider wearable to redefine the relationship between art and clothing.