Iris van Herpen’s exploration of water in all its fashionable states

Sun 1 Sep 2024

A transparent splash, bubbles floating in air, coastal tides, raindrops, snowflakes, fields of mist and fog — water, in all its shapeshifting states, is an enduring inspiration for Iris van Herpen and can be viewed in ‘Water and Dreams’, and ‘Sensory Seas’, two of the nine themes in ‘Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses’ at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) until 7 October 2024.

The explorations of water in Iris van Herpen’s Haute Couture collections stimulate our imaginations and astound us with their ingenuity. To translate water’s transparency and mutability, the designer deploys an eclectic range of materials (thermoplastic polyester, silicone, stainless steel, simax glass, organza, mylar, tulle) and a mix of traditional and cutting-edge techniques (handwork, glassblowing, 3D printing, laser-cutting).

The mystery, power, chaos & beauty of nature are important influences in my designs. Water is one of the elements that I circle back on again & again in different ways, each time as if refracted through a prism. Iris van Herpen

Also from the depths of the ocean, sound designer and composer Salvador Breed, with longstanding collaborator van Herpen, has orchestrated ‘sounds for dresses’ which envelopes visitors to the ‘Sculpting the Senses’ exhibition in an immersive sensory experience. Breed sculpts sound, vibrations, frequencies and moments of silence, his ambient soundscape resonates with the watery worlds that are important to van Herpen.

Watch | Salvador Breed creates a tapestry of sound

As van Herpen explains: ‘When I experiment on textures, Salvador starts translating it into soundscapes for the shows. So when I discovered that every sound can be visualized, through water, for example, my world turned upside down. Instead of Salvador translating the textures I was creating into music, I could also think the other way around’.

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DELVE DEEPER: Journey through ‘Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses’

Another collaboration for ‘Sculpting the Senses’ between van Herpen and Canadian architect–designer Philip Beesley was to develop bespoke mannequins especially for ‘Water and Dreams’. Designed to evoke universal human forms, each mannequin is unique, the filamentary skeletons vary in both size and arrangement across the forms, recalling the bubbles of foam produced by pounding ocean waves.

Bespoke mannequins for ‘Water & Dreams’

Iris van Herpen ‘Water dress’ 2011

Iris van Herpen ‘Water dress’ 2010

Designed to be worn like a necklace, the iconic Water dress (illustrated) resembles an ephemeral splash of water frozen in time. Wanting to translate water’s transparency and fluidity to a wearable form, van Herpen once admitted: ‘I felt the limitations of my own tools and I couldn’t make the water dress in any way with a needle and thread’. Made from heat-moulded waves of PETG (a type of thermoplastic polyester) that were then manipulated using metal tweezers, the garment captures the elusive and ethereal nature of water through the experimental creative process. According to the designer: ‘I often get inspired by materials I cannot work with’.

Iris van Herpen ‘Dimensionism’ 2020

For her Dimensionism dress (illustrated), van Herpen collaborated with master glassblower Bernd Weinmayer. Using highly heat-resistant Simax glass, Weinmayer worked the glass by flame, blowing and shaping hollow tubes to resemble veins inside the body.

According to van Herpen: ‘I wanted to show the elusiveness of water. It’s always surreal to realise that so much of our own body is water. The way the glass is blown for this dress causes very beautiful reflections onto the skin; it morphs the body and the skin underneath very subtly. It is reflecting [the model’s] inside outside . . . making a liquid skeleton . . . This look has gone beyond any of the techniques we have explored, it’s on the edge of immateriality. It’s closer to being a ghost than being a dress’.

Iris van Herpen ‘Hydrozoa’ dress 2020

Based on the Capricorn Coast of central Queensland, artist Shelee Carruthers pours acrylic paint onto canvas to explore the organic nature of fluid art. Carruthers’s free-flowing creations and her affinity for coastal environments, including the Great Barrier Reef, interested van Herpen and they collaborated on the ‘Sensory Seas’ collection 2020. Here, van Herpen has translated the purple and turquoise hues of one of Carruthers’s abstract paintings of ocean life into the sculptural Hydrozoa dress. Made from ‘waves’ of laser-cut PETG (a type of thermoplastic polyester) that have been heat-bonded to layers of digitally printed glass organza, the dress moves like a blue iridescent jellyfish riding an ocean current. The dress was worn by Lady Gaga promoting her album Chromatica, released on 29 May 2020

Watch | Journey through ‘Sculpting the Senses’

Watch | Iris van Herpen in conversation

Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses
Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) Brisbane
The Fairfax Gallery (1.1), Gallery 1.2, and the Eric and Marion Taylor Gallery (1.3)
29 June to 7 October 2024

The exhibition co-organised by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris and QAGOMA, Brisbane, based on an original exhibition designed by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.