There is staring, whispering, prodding. Visitors do their best to point as subtly as possible as Iris van Herpen walks through her own exhibition. It’s the very first day it’s open and it’s super busy. “We just saw you talking to Iris,” say two French fans. “Could you possibly put us in touch with her?”
Iris van Herpen is a world star. The 39-year-old fashion designer from Wamel, Gelderland, counts Beyoncé, Björk and Tilda Swinton among her regular clients, has 1.7 million followers on Instagram and now has a twelve-room solo exhibition in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, right next to the Louvre.
“I’m a bit hoarse from yesterday,” says Van Herpen apologetically. The exhibition is the day before Sculpting the Senses officially opened by Queen Máxima, who described Van Herpen – in French – as “the woman who gave fashion a new dimension”. French first lady Brigitte Macron stood next to it clapping. The museum was packed.
“It was very special,” says Van Herpen in her usual down-to-earth, calm tone. She was especially nervous that evening because she had to give a speech. “I’m not into that at all.”
Van Herpen graduated from the fashion department of ArtEZ in Arnhem in 2006 and started her own fashion house a year later. Since then, she has been creating couture in which she combines traditional craftsmanship with the most progressive techniques – with a completely unique aesthetic that looks straight out of science fiction films.
In 2010, she became the first fashion designer in the world to show a 3D-printed garment on the catwalk. That design can of course also be seen in the exhibition (and on the cover of the accompanying coffee table book). The signs accompanying the 99 (!) other dresses on display in the exhibition contain complex descriptions such as: “laser cut PetG, heat-bonded to numerous layers of digitally printed glass organza”. The materials vary from banana leaf fibers and shells to countless types of plastic.
The exhibition is divided into twelve different themes that recur throughout her oeuvre. For example Sensory Sea Life (the underwater world), Skeletal Embodiment (skeletons) and Cosmic Bloom (the universe). The structure is non-chronological: a dress from 2007 is next to a dress from 2023, which immediately emphasizes how consistent her style has been for seventeen years.
Three-dimensionality of the work
Never before has her work been done so well. During fashion shows and on red carpets, the people wearing her clothes can sometimes cause distraction. Now her designs are presented as sculptures. Expertly highlighted in attractive spaces and surrounded by Van Herpen’s sources of inspiration, they can shine in all their glory. Up close, the technical ingenuity is much more impressive than in photos and videos. “Of course I don’t have any stores and my shows can only be attended by invitation,” says Van Herpen. “At the opening I spoke to many people who are now discovering the three-dimensionality of my work for the first time. That is one of the reasons I was so looking forward to this exhibition.”
„Immersive” is a word that nowadays appears in the press release of every exhibition, but here it is actually appropriate. Visitors are completely absorbed in Van Herpen’s universe. What certainly contributes to this are the ambient soundscapes that her partner, musician and artist Salvador Breed, created.
Next to her dresses are works by contemporary artists who inspire her. The American Rogan Brown, for example, who cuts almost impossibly fragile structures from paper. In 2021, they already worked together on three dresses that are now displayed next to five works of art that he made especially for the exhibition. There are two cabinets by Italian designer Ferruccio Laviani, abstract photos by Kim Keever, 3D installations by David Spriggs. With the theme Water and Dreams the Japanese art collective Mé created a shiny black landscape of waves. All works that logically fit in with Van Herpen’s aesthetics and theme.
Six years ago, she received a call from Olivier Gabet, the then director of the museum, asking if she wanted to come for coffee and talk about a retrospective. “I could hardly believe it. I had seen so many fashion exhibitions here. Now I am in a row between Alaïa, Dior, Mugler and Schiaparelli.”
Broader view
She worked on the exhibition for five years. Curator Cloé Pitiot and assistant curator Louise Curtis traveled back and forth to Amsterdam, and Van Herpen regularly came to Paris. Van Herpen: “I wanted this to be more than a fashion exhibition. It is very important to me to show the relationship between fashion, art, science and nature. I hope that visitors will go home with a broader view of fashion. Because fashion is not just about garments, it can be a form of art, a means of transformation, and it has a relationship with all levels of our lives. I hope visitors feel that depth.”
She walks along the spiral staircase that connects the two floors of the exhibition. Above it hang dozens of photos of superstars in her dresses: Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Cate Blanchett, Naomi Campbell, Natalie Portman, Kate Moss.
When Van Herpen was just starting out, she was advised to make an ‘artist’s copy’ of all the dresses she sold for her archive. “An enormous effort, but if I hadn’t done that, this exhibition would never have happened. Many museums no longer lend out. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has one of the largest collections of my work, but does not lend anything because it is too expensive. It has to be shipped a certain way, someone always has to be with it, it has to be very well insured – that would cost a fortune.” The vast majority of the works on display come from Van Herpen’s own archive.
Back to Beyoncé
She reflects on the dress that Beyoncé wore during her European tour earlier this year. “It is original,” she points out. “I no longer have access to artist’s copies these days. So this will go back to Beyoncé after the exhibition.” Twelve people worked on the dress for 700 hours in her Amsterdam studio. They made 980 crescent shapes by pouring silver-colored silicone into laser-cut molds. They then sewed the shapes one by one by hand onto tulle.
A little further on are two dresses from 2008, made of thousands of metal rods. “Here I stood yesterday with Máxima. I told her that these dresses were made from the ribs from Máxima umbrellas, the children’s umbrellas that were handed out when she married Willem-Alexander in 2002. They had exactly the right size and the right color. It is nice to work with Máxima [Van Herpen ontwierp al eerder een jurk voor haar, NW], because she is really passionate about fashion. She wants to know everything.” The long, cream-colored dress with hand-embroidered sinuous lines that Máxima wore during the opening was a variant of a dress from Van Herpen’s spring 2021 collection. The original is also in the exhibition.
Van Herpen’s studio has been recreated in one of the rooms. The walls are covered with hundreds of pieces of material. Unlike other designers, she does not start with sketches, but rather with material experiments. “We made much of what hangs here in collaboration, for example with Philip Beesley [de Canadese multidisciplinaire kunstenaar met wie ze al meer dan tien jaar samenwerkt, NW], but also with TU Delft and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” Only when she is satisfied with a new material does she start draping it on mannequins, which are also in the room. The sketches come last.
In the first eleven rooms the colors are sober, but in the last room – with the theme Cosmic Bloom – her most colorful dresses come together in an installation on which gravity seems to have no influence. The dresses float upside down and sideways through the room. The music sounds louder than in other halls. “I wanted to create an ending that gives hope.”
After Paris, the exhibition will travel to Brisbane, Singapore, Los Angeles and will come to the Kunsthal in Rotterdam in September 2025. Two days after the opening, Van Herpen takes the train to Amsterdam again, because she has a long to-do list waiting for her. “Brisbane opens in June. The scenography must be completed in December. The space there is twice as big and very high [de plafonds in Parijs zijn juist laag]. So we have to start all over again.”
The exhibition can be seen at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris until April 28, 2024. Madparis.fr
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