Iris van Herpen’s designs never cease to amaze us. At Paris Haute Couture Week 2021, she presented her new collection called ‘Roots of Rebirth’.
This series aims to capture, through 21 looks, the enigmatic world of fungi and their deep interconnection with human life. Van Herpen‘s purpose is to ‘weave a dialogue’ between the earthly and the underworld.
The pieces are designed through a fusion of craftsmanship and high technology, as the designer had been doing in her previous collections. Additionally, it includes eco-friendly, sustainable material and Ocean Plastic fabric. This material is manufactured from waste found in the sea, and recycled by Parley for the Oceans.
The Roots of Rebirth haute couture collection by Iris van Herpen. Photographer Myrthe Giesbers.
Inspired by roots and spores, the garments feature innovative techniques in tailoring, such as ‘henosis‘. This involves various layers of translucent duchess fabric dyed in pastel tones. It aims to create a kind of ‘mantodea’, also known as a ‘mantis.’
Another technique applied to her designs is to ‘bring them to life’ using brass coils. She collaborated with kinetic artist Casey Curran to create two kinetic crowns, which gradually modifies their silhouette. For this, they joined eighteen brass coils with eighteen transparent monofilament threads to provide movement.
She has also applied the same technique to a dress, where the feathers sprouting from it move, giving the impression that the ensemble comes to life.
Van Herpen uses this resource to depict a metaphorical analogy between the rising, and falling of feathers, and the turbulent movement of our minds. This leads us to reassess our reality.
The kinetic crowns of Iris van Herpen’s new Spring-Summer 2021 collection.
Additionally, other creations include hand-embroidered roots that emerge from the dress outward and symmetrically intertwine the models’ bodies. The tones of this design transform throughout the ensemble, ranging from liquid copper color to the deepest hues of burnt dark ochre.
True to her pattern, the Dutch designer has also included the 3D technique in this collection. This time she used it to embroider a mosaic of gill-like structures with fine edges on expandable lace, laser-cut to reveal details between the skin and amethyst-colored fiber. Furthermore, to create transparent fake nails shaped like roots.
Models from Iris van Herpen at the Paris Haute Couture Week 2021 runway show.
The show was presented as a video of a runway without an audience in a dark room to amplify the idea of life underground. Thus, as the models walked, small particles in the video were reproduced, resembling the spores released by fungi to reproduce. The latter were represented by the designs they wore.
The show ended with the presence of top model Natalia Vodianova, who wore one of the two suits made with the ‘henosis’ technique.
Top model Natalia Vodianova for Iris van Herpen’s new collection.
‘Roots of Rebirth’ refers to the book ‘Entangled Life’ by scientist Merlin Sheldrake, in which it is explained that “fungi are the ecological connective tissue, the living seam by which much of the world relates.”
With the persistence of time, evolution prevails, and although these beings are never fixed, they simply exist in a state of flow, a rippling fabric of life itself, dancing to the benevolent rhythm of rebirth. – Iris van Herpen
As Van Herpen has recounted, the collection is a performance dedicated to the importance of our being and the courage of nature. To the infinite interactions that are being woven underground.
Images provided by the Iris van Herpen brand.
