Iris van Herpen this season explored celestial cartography as well as the possibility, with the advances of DNA engineering, of human-animal hybrids one day becoming a reality.
Weighty stuff, but the delivery was ever ethereal, from the opening midnight-blue pleated bustier gown with curved wing-like sleeves, revisited in pleated and printed Op Art versions, to the cream dresses covered in concentric layers echoing a topographic map.
On a long-sleeved column dress made from a 3-D net-like material, waves of neon orange pigment flushed around the body, like flames.
Iris van Herpen Couture Spring 2019
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Equally dramatic were the vaporous Cosmica dresses in layers of translucent organza printed with colored clouds by New York-based artist Kim Keever, which lent a surrealist touch. Meanwhile a blue-and-white minidress built from an accumulation of scalloped edged layers — the kind of piece Björk, one of the brand’s followers could pull off — actually resembled a cloud.
It was all still very engineered but with a stronger focus on couture fabrics. The color and dyeing techniques — hooked on a warm palette of ochre, tyrian purple and indigo — also brought a new more grounding dimension to the collection, even if these were gowns destined for some galaxy far, far away.
Cue the finale: a laser beam projection of swirling liquid clouds, with precise lines of light tracing the footwear and hems of gowns to create a glow-in-the-dark effect.
In the words of Coco Rocha, who attended the show dressed in one of van Herpen’s sci-fi creations: “Everything she does, of course it’s art and sculpture, but it’s also what you think the future would look like.”
Van Herpen backstage revealed she is working on a major exhibition for an undisclosed site in Paris for 2020. The designer is also working on a new book and is in the completion stages on her first big architecture project, a natural history museum located somewhere in the Netherlands, which is still under wraps.