Iris van Herpen Has No Flagship Store, No Diffusion Line and No Plans to Change
There is a dress on the fifth floor of the Brooklyn Museum that looks like it was grown, not made. Not sewn. Not cut. Standing in front of it, you will feel something that fashion almost never produces anymore: genuine bewilderment. Not at the price tag (there is none). Not at the celebrity who wore it. At the object itself. At the fact that a human being made this. And that feeling is precisely why you should make the trek into Brooklyn if you’re in Manhattan for New York Fashion Week.
Iris Van Herpen is, depending on who you ask, either the most important fashion designer working today or the best kept secret in the industry—and both answers are equally valid. She has dressed Beyoncé, Björk and Cate Blanchett. But unlike almost every other designer at that level, she has no flagship store, no diffusion line, no perfume and virtually no accessible entry point. Her couture is made to order, in tiny quantities, for a client list as private as the work itself. Most of her pieces, once they leave her Amsterdam atelier, disappear into wardrobes and private collections.
Speaking exclusively with Observer, Van Herpen said that her decision to remain focused on haute couture is deliberate and not simply for creative reasons: “Of the 100 billion garments produced each year, 92 million tons end up in landfills. If I go into ready-to-wear, I will become part of this system. I believe we need more art and creativity in fashion and less mass production… Expanding into ready-to-wear would require outside investors. That would mean diluting my creative freedom. It would change the space and place inside myself that I create from.”
Van Herpen grew up in Wamel, a small town in the Netherlands, surrounded by the flat Dutch countryside, crisscrossed with rivers and canals. She studied fashion design at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem, spent time at Alexander McQueen’s London studio absorbing a master class in fashion and then returned to Amsterdam to begin building something entirely her own. Her ideas often begin in dialogue with scientists, architects and musicians, or through research into phenomena like turbulence, synesthesia and sound. When she debuted her first collection in 2007, it was clear she viewed the body less as something to dress than as a site where science, nature and imagination could intersect.
“Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” is the North American debut of a global exhibition that has already traveled to Paris, Brisbane, Singapore and Rotterdam, and during our conversation, Van Herpen reflected on the relationship between her presentations and her museum shows: “Runway shows and exhibitions are like two complementary worlds that complete each other. The exhibition extends that world to everyone. It allows the visitors to see the garments in every detail, to move around them, to discover the layers of craftsmanship and innovation.”
More than 140 pieces are on view, from the Magnetic Motion collection’s Radiography Dress to the Hypnosis Cape-Dress, incorporating 3D-printed forms, laser-cut materials, silicone and intricate textile techniques, creating works that feel simultaneously organic and engineered. “Nature inspires me visually through her textures, patterns and structures,” she explained. “I use biomimicry in my work because I’m interested in learning from nature. It’s about understanding the growth systems within nature and translating them into couture.” Coral specimens, fossils and immersive pieces by Philip Beesley, Tara Donovan and James Turrell surround the dresses. A soundscape by Salvador Breed fills the galleries so that the experience is not simply visual but also felt.
Dior makes beautiful clothes. So does Chanel and every house at the top of the fashion pyramid. But Van Herpen is doing something categorically different—operating on a different set of criteria entirely. Her influences run from fractal geometry and neuroscience to fluid dynamics. She is closer in spirit to architect Zaha Hadid than to the fashion legacy of Cristóbal Balenciaga. “There has never been a clear boundary between couture, science, nature and art,” according to the designer. “They are all intertwined and part of my creative process organically.” That seamlessness is what separates her from her ostensible peers, and it is what makes standing in front of her work feel less like visiting a fashion exhibition and more like visiting a scientist’s laboratory or a natural history museum.
Van Herpen’s pieces reward repeated looking. They reveal themselves slowly, changing with the angle, the light and the time you spend with them. When asked how seeing so much of her work together changes the way she thinks about her archive, she said, “I hope the archive will always remain alive, always in evolution in its craftsmanship—a living source that continues to evolve and inspire conversations.” That future requires balancing preservation with access. “On one hand, we want the work to be seen as widely as possible and to travel internationally so that people can experience it firsthand. On the other, most looks are made from textiles that cannot be exposed to light continuously without damaging them over time.”
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