The sense of freedom that Iris van Herpen explores in her unforgettable Earthrise collection is of a different stripe entirely than the flag-waving kind celebrated by Americans on Independence Day. For this former dancer, freedom is always in some way associated with movement. Van Herpen has collaborated with Domitille Kiger, the French female world-champion skydiver, who is now, the designer believes, the first such athlete to wear couture during an aerial performance. Yet being the first is hardly the most remarkable part of this project. As is typical with this Dutch designer, everything—including her approach, the materials she chooses, and the meaning behind her work—is multilayered, and there’s much to unpack.
“In the beginning is my end,” wrote the poet T. S. Eliot, and in a collection focused on circles, it seems fitting to start with Kiger’s finale look, which is a feat of engineering that artfully combines handwork and tech fabric with performance and function.
Van Herpen is always questioning what couture can be, including by suggesting that 3D printing can be as unique as a hand-sewn garment. She’s formed an alliance with science, and she regularly works with people outside of the fashion industry to bring new perspectives to it. She chose Kiger, she said, because “I think she’s just a very symbolic figure to embody the female qualities that I was looking for. It’s really the freedom of adventure and the strength of being able to overcome your fears, and to really be so eager to create that you’re able to go far in pushing your own boundaries.”
Creating Kiger’s dress was a way for the designer to push her technique and vision into new dimensions, and involved a lot of trial and error, much of which was conducted in wind tunnels used for indoor skydiving. The challenge van Herpen set herself was “to merge the delicacy of the craftsmanship with the extreme durability that is needed within this jump, so really bringing two opposites into the middle.” She continued: “It was really a challenge because I must admit, when I started I had a lot of misconceptions on what would work, and what wouldn’t.” The end result, a dress in a medley of blues, is delicate and durable, and unapologetically feminine. This was important to van Herpen, who notes that Kiger works in a male-dominated field.
The collection doesn’t ignore the earthbound; there are 18 looks for those who only dream of flying. Van Hepen continued her collaboration with Parley for the Oceans this season, meaning that many of the materials she used are made of recycled plastic. The designer worked with several artists as well, including James Merry for the face jewelry, and Rogan Brown, who creates hand-cut layered sculptures that build on the manner of natural science illustration. The atelier incorporated elements of his meticulous technique into their own processes to particularly strong effect on the lace-like white dresses. Van Herpen also developed a sphere-inspired kinetic dress with Casey Curran. “This time instead of emphasizing the turbulence of our planets, this is actually more related to the butterfly effect, that every move that you make has an effect on something else... every sphere is interconnected, so when one moves all the other ones are moving in waves.”
The interconnectedness of all things is van Herpen’s constant preoccupation. This season she pulled back to take a far-sighted view from above, aided by a photo taken from Apollo 8, showing the earth as a fragile “blue marble” suspended in a vast universe. “The perspective of us human beings being the most dominant and important part of this planet is of course an old-fashioned one by now,” she observed. “There are still people thinking that way, but we are definitely at a point in time where their perspective is shifting. Science is telling us, but I think art is also really enhancing that new perspective. And especially the young generation is feeling it more and more.”
The designer’s shift from the micro to the macro comes at a time when most of the world is also slowly transitioning out from the cocoon of home and back into a wider world that, sadly, feels divided rather than united. Her focus on interdependence and the big picture are needed now. It’s time to recalibrate.
Looking at earth from outer space,” said van Herpen, you “see a borderless place without hierarchies, and you can really see that it is one living organism, and that is actually a really old concept, which is called anima mundi. More and more, even through science, we start understanding that religious thought is actually real, everything depends on everything.”
