Iris van Herpen: ‘The most beautiful people are free in their identity’

Iris van Herpen thrives off concepts that involve 3D printing, architecture and new ideas of beauty. She’s put models in twisted silver face jewellery, and space-age eyeliner, and topped their heads off with futuristic crowns. In other words, she’s not your typical fashion designer – and she certainly doesn’t approach beauty in a conventional way. Instead, she reinterprets the concept of what beauty is, along with re-examining the female form.

It’s a few days before her AW23 couture show, which is set to take place in the garden of the Hôtel d’Avaray on July 3. From her city atelier, Herpen is thinking about the effect that the concept of beauty itself has had on her work: “Beauty is transformation,” she says. “It’s freedom. It’s those two elements. It’s freedom in who you are, and the way you express yourself. It’s not trying to fit in the stereotypes or trying to copy others. It’s really about finding your own identity and daring to change, to transform. I think it takes courage to not stick to an expectation that other people have of you.”

For Van Herpen’s AW23 couture collection, the designer created jagged gowns that alluded to future cities, Grecian pleated cut-out dresses fit for alien royalty, spiral pleated frocks that mirrored exotic flowers, and future-forward pieces that floated by with sprigs of geometric accents flying in the wind.

But the designer also went back to a topic that’s long been the source of inspiration for her: face jewellery. This time around, she collaborated with Malakai and Rinaldy Yunardi on metal mask-like structures that blurred the face and eschewed the features – bringing the idea of fashion as an extension of make-up, or rather, the face – to life. “We’ve been working on designs that are very sculptural, but airy at the same time, so they’re really extending around the face and into the air in a very geometric but central way,” she says. James Kaliardos did the make-up this time around; smoky, silvery shades dabbed on the eyelids which served as a sort of parallel to the metallic pieces dripping from the models’ faces.

Face jewellery has become almost intrinsic to the Iris van Herpen brand, like a phoenix rising from the proverbial ashes of traditional make-up. “It’s the subtle extension of the essence of the collection, but focused on beauty – and the interaction between the facial expression of the model,” she says. “I’m always trying to express and elevate the character through the face.” Van Herpen uses face jewellery in a unique way, capturing and emphasising the faces of the models and then using make-up to emphasise their features in a way that looks both alien and futuristic.

As one of the most notable women fusing fashion and technology on a large platform, Van Herpen essentially remaps the body into something entirely new every season. Women become spirited pinwheels of fabric, blossoming flowers, alien plants and cocoons of nature. She’s not interested in working to adhere to the typical female form as it’s presented in society, but rather spearheading the idea of the body transformed.

“I’m really trying in this collection to find the perfect balance between a geographic order and a fluidity,” she says. “And it’s really the body that is spiking the fluid side of the collection. So to give an example, there are looks that have very parametric, icy architectural patterns on the body, but then they are extended around the model in AI, and it’s only the movement of the person wearing it that forces the patterns to start dissembling and come alive.”

Selecting models is also a part of her unique approach to beauty. “The models that we’re casting, they are really characters,” she says. “They are identities and it’s about bringing those characters forward.” The biggest challenge for her? Finding the time to execute her beauty visions; she often only finalises the beauty looks the day before the show. “It’s always a battle with time as well, because we only have a certain amount of time to do all of the girls before the show, so it’s about trying to find the balance. Also, we don’t wanna overload the girls. They still need to be present.”

This season, Van Herpen specifically looked to the visionary ideas of Jacques Rougerie, a French architect and oceanographer, known as the ‘Architect of the Sea’ as well as the world’s first floating city, ‘Oceanix’ which is currently being built in South Korea. “This collection is really inspired by architecture,” she says. “There’s a movement which is really focusing on bionic design, which means looking at nature for its systems, for its science and trying to extract it. It’s almost as if we’re collaborating with nature rather than extracting from it.” One incredibly majestic extension of the body was the sheer air-like fabric that spiralled around one of the gesturing models – like a transparent bubble about to pop. “It’s the lightest fabric on earth, actually,” she says. “It’s developed by a Japanese company that we’ve been collaborating with.”

All this was presented outdoors, a stark contrast to Van Herpen’s previous collections but intrinsic to her vision. “This has been a dream for me for a very long time,” she says. “I’m really excited about having my work in an environment that has been most inspiring for all of my work, which is nature.”

As she continues to forge ahead in the arena of tech and fashion, it’s clear that the beauty side of fashion will always be a part of her identity – or at the very least, a pressing topic she thinks about as she evaluates her next collection. “The most beautiful people I know are very free in their identity and the way they express themselves,” she says before pausing for a moment: “I think that’s beautiful.”

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