The biomorphic and futuristic garments of Amsterdam-based fashion designer Iris van Herpen have become something instantly recognisable. Not only have her designs adorned the likes of Beyoncé, Björk and Blanchett, but for this year’s Paris Haute Couture Week, van Herpen has transformed the body itself into “aerial sculptures” – a step that grounds her innovation and creativity not only as a designer, but as an artist.
On the occasion of her major exhibition opening at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) this past weekend, van Herpen shared that she first visited Australia as a thrill-seeking 17-year-old. Here she took that leap of faith – what she recalled as a ‘reset of body and mind’ – and six years later in 2007, opened her eponymous and now hugely successful atelier in Amsterdam.
In Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses, the Dutch creative shows no signs of slowing down.
The exhibition was first developed by Dr Cloé Pitiot and Louise Curtis at Musée des Arts Décoratifs and, after a successful premiere in Paris, it recently opened at GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art). The Brisbane exclusive provides a bigger playground for van Herpen and her partner and sound designer, Salvador Breed. New components have been drawn from GOMA’s Collection to add local context, brought together by GOMA curators Nina Miall and Jacinta Giles.
Described as someone ‘interested in everything but fashion’, van Herpen’s myriad inspirations span art, science, technology, cosmology, sustainability and dance, which she pursued in her early years. These connections form an eye-watering display of garments, artworks, sculptures and natural history artefacts, alongside video and projections.
Early in her career, van Herpen interned with the late designer Alexander McQueen (1969-2010) and this shows through Sculpting the Senses. The exhibition experience may resonate strongly for those who recall Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in 2022-23, which exemplified the mind of a designer who had a strong creative vision that was beyond his time and drew inspiration from a wide range of sources.
As compared to a retrospective, however, van Herpen’s presence is keenly felt in Sculpting the Senses, with the creative fine-tuning visual and spatial elements on the ground, and really offering visitors a glimpse into her mind. Breed’s sound design adds depth to the immersion and is tailored to different thematics as well as GOMA’s space itself.
Sculpting the Senses is thematically divided through nine visual motifs and creative inspirations, including ‘Sensory Sea Life’, ‘Skeletal Embodiment’, ‘Cosmic Bloom’ and ‘Synaesthesia‘, something that van Herpen, Breed and Pitiot all experience to varying degrees. For van Herpen, it’s seeing patterns when hearing music and, for Breed, vice versa.
Intentionally non-chronological, the exhibition highlights the maturity and relentless commitment in van Herpen’s creations.
Iris van Herpen: making the ‘digital aesthetic’ a physical reality
One of van Herpen’s strengths is her ability to manifest designs that feel as if they could only exist in a non-material, digital realm into reality, and retain that wonder.
Sculpting the Senses presents 130 of those haute couture creations, and no matter how close one gets, the magic doesn’t falter. This is one of the reasons why van Herpen’s work translates so well from the runway to a gallery.
Take for example the Hydrozoa dress from the Sensory Seas collection (2020), made in collaboration with Queensland artist Shelee Carruthers and worn by Lady Gaga for Chromatica. The loopy “waves” of the garment float gently off the mannequin and flutter ever so slightly with the movement of the air in the gallery space, replicating the sea-life organisms that inspired it.
Architectural influence is exemplified in the Cathedral dress from the Micro collection (2012), with 3D-printed polyamide dipped in a copper electroplating bath to replicate a rusty gothic exterior while still allowing movement when worn.
A segment of Sculpting the Senses brings to light some of van Herpen’s work in progress, from design sketches to two full walls of garment samples. Her workspace has often been described as a lab and here lies a treasure chest of that experimentation for students, practitioners and visitors alike.
When asked at the keynote on 6 July whether she has been exploring the potential of her pieces in a virtual setting, van Herpen said the metaverse is yet to become refined enough to fully translate her work. ‘It needs to become more human’, she added.
In many ways, the pieces that van Herpen creates are only a fraction of her imagination, made with the skills and techniques that are currently available. Even though the style of the garments appears futuristic, van Herpen explained that her practice is deeply rooted in craftsmanship, something she calls ‘craftolution‘, which combines cutting-edge technology with a traditional haute couture philosophy.
Read: 200 fashion designs gifted to NGV
The art of moving air
The idea of weightlessness runs through Sculpting the Senses and, to a certain extent, in van Herpen’s life itself. She cites gravity as one of the biggest challenges to overcome in her designs, and skydiving is indeed a face-off with the fundamental force of our planet.
The idea of “moving air” is also raised by Breed in his practice as a sound designer. For Sculpting the Senses, sound plays a narrative role in guiding visitors from the microscopic level of microorganisms to the depth of the ocean. In ‘Skeletal Embodiment’, Breed’s sound design evokes the tinkling sensation of cracking joints, paired with van Herpen’s 3D-printed skeletal armours.
Sculpting the Senses ends at ‘Cosmic Bloom’, dedicated to the vastness of the sky and universe. Here, van Herpen’s Earthrise gown takes flight, worn by skydiving champion Domitille Kiger in a video documentary directed by Paris-based filmmaker Masha Vasyukova.
Mannequins in this space also defy conventional upright displays and, instead, hang upside down from the ceiling or levitate sideways through the gallery. It’s one of the logistical difficulties that both Musée des Arts Décoratifs and GOMA had to navigate in order to bring the creative team’s vision to life, and it pays off.
The sound in this room is described as ‘a cosmos of collaboration’ by Breed, who worked with different musicians and composers with the ‘sound of the universe’ as a provocation.
Adding local connections
Staging a touring exhibition is a major feat, but it is when there is local context added that visitors feel most engaged. Works drawn from the QAGOMA collection in the Brisbane iteration of Sculpting the Senses include Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Double Deer#4 (2010) and Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Nets (2000), as well as pieces by First Nations artists such as Gunybi Ganambarr.
A mainstage feature is Megan Cope’s Whispers Wall (2023), originally commissioned for the Sydney Opera House’s 50th birthday celebrations and reformulated for Sculpting the Senses. Miall worked alongside Cope for this iteration, which features a cascade of more than 85,000 oyster shells signalling First Nations knowledge. It’s a formidable presence behind van Herpen’s Diploria coat from the Escapism collection (2011), which replicates the texture of the coral species, Diploria labyrinthiformis, also known as the brain coral.
Both van Herpen and Breed will be visiting other parts of Queensland as part of their Australian itinerary, led by local First Nations guides to experience and be inspired by Country.
What Sculpting the Senses is also successful in highlighting is the widely collaborative nature of van Herpen’s practice, from incorporating new material technologies into garments to spatial design for runways. As Pitiot noted at the opening, ‘It takes a community of artists to create this exhibition.’
The show captures the ingenuity of a wide range of cross-disciplinary researchers, thinkers and makers – including the mastermind of nature itself – and that is what makes the possibilities of van Herpen’s designs truly limitless.
Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses is on display at GOMA until 7 October; ticketed.
This writer travelled to Brisbane courtesy of GOMA.
