The Beauty of Uncertainty: Iris van Herpen new spring 2011 Collection
If there’s someone I can refer to when I have to talk about the integration of digital into fashion is definitely Iris van Herpen.
For her spring 2011 collection, she took further all the potential of digital design and presents breathtaking garments that range between post human age and poetry.
This collection is even more developped than the last one, yet still presenting the designer’s favourite themes.
Here we find extremely haptic and beautifully confusing pieces, with a perfect mix of technical materials ( usually not used in fashion), traditional textile manipulations, and digital fabrication techniques.
Talking about her work and the melting of art, fashion and product design in an interview by Dazed Digital van Herpen said: It’s a mix of everything. It’s important to work round the body, and my work is about fabric, shape and new techniques. I used a lot of fabrics commonly used in architecture –I like to bring new techniques into fashion, because otherwise I cannot breathe nor continue creating.
The result is a collection that evokes this kind of hybridation ( between technology, research on materials and fabric manipulations) by presenting uncertain garments:
Some organic-like elements, maybe lichens, melt into the dress and aggregate, sculpting the top of the garment. Everything seems to be manipulated by hands, yet the fabric is kind of unusual, silky and airy but rigid at the same time.
One other dress seems made of multiple random folds, reminding the softness of a light fabric, but made of a solid white material ( probably by using 3D printing technique).
The last one could remind of a fur from a distance, but seen closely, this “fur” is actually made of multiples layers positioned on their edge.
In this magical world of Iris van Herpen, high technology isn’t a synonym of rational or cold,but rather of a sweet illusion.
