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Iris Van Herpen may have been missing from the couture schedule this season, but the Dutch designer’s presence was still felt in Paris. Her exhibition at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, “Iris Van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses”, which opened on 29 November, has so far drawn in 113,000 visitors. For Van Herpen, it’s part of a strategy to raise awareness of her work beyond high-fashion circles.
While the value of couture for most luxury brands rests primarily within its halo effect, Van Herpen has turned it into a business — couture represents the majority of her sales. “The more I think about it, the more I realise how unique this is,” she says over a decaf cappuccino in Paris. “The whole studio, the whole company is driven by haute couture. There are no accessory lines, ready-to-wear.” It’s helped her build a strong reputation, but also limits her reach.
High-profile collaborations with blue-chip brands like Dom Pérignon, Rolls-Royce, Huawei and Apple have helped to propel awareness. But the exhibition takes it up a level: bringing her brand to new audiences. “It’s not only fashion people who are going,” says Van Herpen. “And I think it’s attracting different people because it connects couture to art, science and design. This interdisciplinary way of working is my natural way of thinking.”
Van Herpen graduated from the Netherlands’s ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem and interned for Alexander McQueen in London before launching her own label in 2007, aged 23 (when we meet, she’s wearing a long Alexander McQueen dress paired with high platform shoes). She gained traction early on after her designs caught the eye of Björk and Lady Gaga. Over the years, Björk has worn and collected a number of Iris Van Herpen dresses, including the worm dress from the autumn 2011 couture collection. Lady Gaga, too, has long worn her creations, like a couture dress with a metallic corset from autumn 2009. Since then she has continued to carve out a reputation for sculptural creations that use techniques like 3D printing, laser cutting and 3D moulding. She joined the official couture calendar in 2011, and won the Andam Prize in 2014.
She has tried ready-to-wear in the past, just after she won the Andam award. “It was good for me to do it because I learnt that it’s not my way of working. From the very beginning, I’ve focused very much on developing new techniques and materials. That’s not something you can necessarily do in production. A lot of the techniques that we do in the atelier are not done anywhere else.”
She has a team of 30 in Amsterdam in an atelier facing an old harbour (in the summer the team goes swimming). Her creations start from €30,000 and can exceed €100,000, as they take several months to make. The business is so niche that it’s largely immune to macroeconomics and, consequently, to the current economic downturn, she says. But it’s not without limitations.
“The hard part for us is the time that it takes for our pieces to be made,” she says. “Fashion is very quick and the big ateliers can make a red carpet look in a few weeks. We are a small team and we have a limited capacity. We always have to balance and choose. So often stylists come to us, can you make something? And it’s in three or four weeks. It breaks my heart, because we need more time. We used to do a lot of long evenings, but now we don’t do that anymore. I mean, for a show, yes, but not all the time.”
Her team has had their hands full with the exhibition: there are around 100 dresses on display, many of which needed some retouching after they were called in from clients or brought out from the archives. The staircase in the exhibition is dedicated to photos of stars in her creations including Jennifer Lopez, Tilda Swinton and Beyoncé.
Couture houses have been struggling to recruit enough artisans and bring younger generations to these jobs. Van Herpen faces a similar challenge as she tries to scale. “In a normal atelier, you can hire more seamstresses if you’re busier but we cannot do that because the techniques we use are so specialised,” she says. “It’s one of the more difficult things. We’re living in a society now where people like to do something for a few years and then go into something else, which is understandable and there is a beauty to that. But for this type of craftsmanship, it takes 10 years to really become a master.”
What’s next
When the exhibition travels to Brisbane at the end of June, she hopes to have her “A-Iris” project ready, an AI activation that will let viewers interact with a digitised version of the designer herself. Van Herpen says: “It’s still in the early phases. It’s an exploration on how the audience in the exhibition can even come closer to me, because what I really love is doing interviews with people. People can understand the work better, really dive into the techniques.” Rather than use a general AI tool like ChatGPT, Van Herpen is training a personalised AI, “so it can become an extension of my own brain”.
She’s not considering AI for her creations though. “I would never give up my own creativity. The creative process is the most valuable thing that we have as an artist. I really work from intuition, my emotions, my memories, my dreams, my hopes. I don’t think an AI could take that over. But in terms of communication, it’s a great tool. I do think people can come closer to me and to my way of thinking and to my techniques if I have A-Iris that can really speak for me in a very personalised way in the exhibition. I think we all can look at AI in a way that works for us.”
When the metaverse wave swept through fashion, she was in an excellent position to ride it out. After all, her sculptural and fantastical dresses aren’t a far cry from digital fashion creations. But she has largely stayed away from the trend and hasn’t yet generated digital versions of her designs. “Already in 2009, we were making looks fully digitally first but we never showed these files, because it’s more like a process for us.” To release the files in their entirety would be sharing valuable IP. “But sharing it visually, we could do it. It’s just that when it’s done into the materials, it’s always more magical.”
She plans to show during the autumn couture season, which will be held from 24 to 27 June, a week earlier than usual to accommodate the Paris Olympics. Coming up next, a movie that she created the costumes for is set to come out in the first half of the year. And it’s not the first time: she created costumes for Black Panther and for Lucy starring Scarlett Johansson. “It’s really inspiring to dive into a director’s mind. I’m always inspired by how they can think of so many different aspects, how they can touch you in such a profound way. It’s much more storytelling than fashion can do.”
Would she entertain a job with a fashion house? “I’m very stubborn. Even in my own decisions in my label, I decide to only do haute couture. So it’s a very conscious decision to focus on slow fashion and obviously, these are not money-driven choices.”
The exhibition is just the start of her exploration of art and fashion. “I want to go even further. I have a lot of questions from clients, as they are art collectors, on whether I can make something aside from ‘for the body’. If I can expand the multidisciplinary approach that I have — it’s like dancing, finding your balance. You have to keep on training because it’s harder to be in different disciplines at the same time. But I think it’s very special when it works out.”
