Iris van Herpen is a Dutch fashion designer and couturier renowned for her futuristic, darkly fantastical aesthetics. Van Herpen's designs are utterly unique and works of art in themselves. Her early adoption of 3D printing technologies placed her in the vanguard of the technologie"s introduction into fashion.
The designer writes on her website, "For me fashion is an expression of art that is very close 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."
Van Herpen studied Fashion Design at Artez Institute of the Arts Arnehm and interned at Alexander McQueen in London and began her label in 2007.
Herpen's work cannot simply be defined as fashion design, in fact it transcends beyond the world of fashion and expresses other forms of art. She continuously experiments with unconventional materials, innovative techniques and advanced technologies. At first, she had started off using fabrics in her work, however it limited her from sculpting, building and constructing new structures and forms. Thus she added various atypical materials to her list for usage to create her extra ordinary designs. Taking this to consideration , it is not astonishing that the words 'sculpt' , 'sculpture' and 'sculptural' are used when referring to her work . However , these works of art are not wearable , they only please the eyes and reproduce the designer's concept.
Herpen's designs function when they equally interact with the human body and the two complement, complete, follow and transform each other. In her designs movement plays an essential role and is higly important to analyze and judge how the body and the design change and behave together during any sort of motion.
She became the first to introduce the 3D printing technology in the fashion world. Iris is stunned with the way such a medium can work and produce endless design possibilities. Due to this reason , her work started to be referred to as 'futuristic'.
Sources:
www.buisinessoffashion.com
www.showstudio.com
www.famousfashiondesigners.org