Iris van Herpen Explores the Human Condition Via Haute Couture

Iris van Herpen was a model student at the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, Holland, back in the early 2000s, relishing the chance to dabble in photography, painting and sculpture in addition to her chosen specialization, fashion — until she was told that her graduate fashion collection could not contain any handwork.

“I got quite rebellious for that and some other reasons, because craftsmanship was really my language,” the Dutch couturier recalls. “In the end, I showed what I made at home…but they let me graduate anyway.

“In my opinion, it’s actually really important to know about your craftsmanship, because it infuses the way you think and also how you design.”

Indeed, intensive material research and cutting-edge production techniques go to the core of van Herpen’s work, one of the most original talents to emerge so far this millennium. She is also unique in her multidisciplinary approach and a full-throttle devotion to nature, architecture, science-driven innovation and human possibility.

While her university prepared its students for today’s industrialized, fast-moving fashion system, van Herpen gravitated immediately to haute couture, finding it a more “artistic expression” of fashion, and aligned with her intense interest in how things are made — or could be made. She established her house in 2007.

“Art and fashion have been in dialog with each other throughout history, and we need to continue that dialog,” she says over Google Meet, tilting her head in a way that brings to mind the Birth of Venus painting. “We need that space within fashion to experiment, to widen the boundaries — to bring science in, to bring innovation in, because the world is changing.”

At the same time, van Herpen remains devoted to traditional couture techniques like pleating, draping and embroidery, know-how that would have been lost without the likes of Chanel, Dior, Valentino — and her.

“I know this sounds big, but I really believe this: (haute couture) is an expression of the human soul. I think any form of art is, and that’s why it’s so important to keep it alive and to bring it into the time that we live in now,” she says.

The soft-spoken designer also treats her metier like something of an extreme sport, having showcased her designs in the deepest swimming pool in Europe — and on the back of an elite skydiver as she plunged headfirst toward Earth at 186 miles per hour.

Her last couture collection in July 2025 — she now shows annually to give ample time for R&D — featured a “living dress” incorporating 125 million bioluminescent algae embedded in nutrient gel. It glows an otherworldly blue in response to movement, and it is still very much alive, headed for the Brooklyn Museum, the latest stop for her hit “Sculpting the Senses” exhibition that debuted at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2023, and also made a stops in Brisbane, Singapore and Rotterdam.

Matthew Yokobosky, Brooklyn Museum’s senior curator of fashion and material culture, says her work feels especially urgent today “because it mirrors the questions shaping our moment — about innovation and AI, sustainability, and our relationships to the natural and ‘mystical’ worlds.

“While she is rooted in haute couture, what she offers audiences goes beyond clothing — it’s an expanded vision of how we understand the body in relation to technology, ecology and the cosmos. Visitors are drawn not only to the beauty and craftsmanship, but to a sense of wonder,” he adds.

Known for creations incorporating laser-cutting, silicon molding and electromagnetic weaving — and dressing such prominent performers as Lady Gaga, Björk, Beyoncé and Lisa Manobal, van Herpen has also been the subject of solo shows at leading institutions including the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands in 2012, the Textile Museum of Sweden in 2014, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2015 and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in 2018.

The designer is fully aware that exhibition visitors are highly unlikely to become couture clients, but she hopes it stirs something.

“The power and beauty of art is not necessarily owning it,” van Herpen says. “For young people, I hope it inspires them to be creative in life. They don’t need to go in fashion necessarily. It can be engineering, it can be anything, but I hope that it inspires them to understand that all these creative fields influence each other and that they feel empowered to be creative in whatever they do later on.”

Over a 75-minute conversation, van Herpen traced her early interest in fashion through to her ongoing experimentations with materials, holding out hope that in a decade or two, 4D printing will advance such that she can use fabrics that transform their shape and patterns over time.

WWD: When sparked your interest in fashion?

I.v.H.: My grandma was actually a collector of clothes. She had historical costumes, but also contemporary fashions, accessories, hats, wigs and shoes everything. The whole attic was full and as a kid, I would always stay with her and dress up in her attic, sometimes alone, but sometimes with a friend. And I remember feeling like a different person when I was going into these clothes.

I still have a lot of photos from those dress-up sessions, because I would always come downstairs to show it off. This was basically heaven for me.

Later on, I would also help my mom, because she would make clothes and that was my very first introduction to patternmaking. After that, I would start collecting clothes and remaking them into new versions, combining fabrics from different garments into new ones. I think that’s a really good way to understand the construction of the garments, because you basically undo them, you cut them open, you start seeing the patterns.

WWD: You trained in classical dance first though. Why?

I.v.H.: My mom was a dance teacher, and we would always go to dance performances, but I just wanted to do classical ballet. I really liked it. I did both classical ballet and violin, and I think they are both very structured lessons, but I just really liked working with my hands as well, and to create something that existed outside myself.

The art academy was everything for me. I worked really hard, from morning until the wee hours. I was just in heaven there.

WWD: Who were your early fashion heroes when you decided to study fashion design?

I.v.H.: Lee Alexander McQueen, for being so strong in his identity and always expressing his fashion as a form of art. He was a big example, and that’s also, of course, the reason that I went to intern with him. Also Yohji Yamamoto. I remember looking at that as well for the beautiful textures and the shapes.

Azzedine Alaïa was a role model as well because he defined his own timelines within fashion. I think that’s really courageous for him to do that so early on, when the system was still so rigid.

WWD: Why did you start with haute couture?

I.v.H.: Haute couture is really where my heart is. It’s my language, it’s the way I think, it’s the way I work. Craftsmanship is an amazing challenge. There’s so much to learn there, and I always feel that I am time traveling in a way, because I’m learning so much from the people before me.

WWD: What would you say was your biggest career breakthrough, or breakthroughs?

I.v.H.: It has been quite gradual. Of course, Paris Fashion Week was a really big moment for me. When I became a guest member of the French fashion federation, my audience suddenly became much more international: Clients would visit the show. Press-wise, that was a big transition for me as well.

The VIPs that were wearing me also really helped, like Lady Gaga. She started wearing my work pretty soon after I graduated. And as a young designer, that’s so valuable, because you’re seen so internationally already.

Also I was really lucky because there was a museum in the Netherlands that started collecting my work right from the beginning. And that is very rare, because museums usually wait 10 years or longer. That was a big support financially, and also other museums started to collect me.

WWD: You dabbled in ready-to-wear but abandoned it quickly. Why?

I.v.H.: Well, the reason that I started was because I won the ANDAM Award, and that was part of it. It was great to do it for a few seasons, but I had already invested a few years into my own techniques and materials. The factories that I was working with for ready-to-wear weren’t capable of those kinds of techniques, so I felt like I was going back to the academy, back to a more narrow set of techniques.

What I’m so passionate about is actually widening my scope of techniques. I have this really deep curiosity about new materials, new techniques, and I feel there’s so much to explore in fashion still.

WWD: Were you ever tempted to join a heritage house and become a creative director?

I.v.H.: I’ve had conversations, but to be honest, if I were to work for a bigger brand the way I work, it would mean that I would have to abandon my own brand, because I’m so involved in it.

Nowadays, it’s very unsure for a creative director on how long you will be somewhere. I’ve built my own atelier, my own studio, and this is durable for the future. I know I can do this for a long time, but if I abandon my studio, it will be really hard to recreate something similar, and maybe even impossible. So throwing away something that precious for something that might last a few years, I find it’s not a good decision.

Also, I must say, my biggest luxury in life is my creative freedom as an artist. So as long as I can be independent, I think it’s my biggest luxury in life, and that’s also how I can offer my clients something that they cannot find anywhere else, because the work is so personal and the techniques are so personal as well. It feels important to keep that going.

WWD: What’s the most challenging thing about being independent?

I.v.H.: It’s finding the right people with the right skills, because I have built my atelier to be so specific. The way we work is just so different than a standard atelier.

My head of atelier oversees all the techniques. But as we have grown, we need a second head, and it’s almost impossible to find that person that has enough knowledge of the traditional couture techniques, let alone the more innovative ones.

I am looking for that person already for two years. It makes me realize how special it is what we do, but it is also so niche that there’s a fragility.

Even if you are a skilled seamstress within haute couture, it definitely takes at least a year in our atelier, maybe more, before you have enough knowledge in order to really be part of the whole process.

WWD: Do you have specific ambitions in mind for your house?

I.v.H.: I’m planning to build a new studio, which is pretty exciting, because then I can also design it partly. This is more of a short-term ambition. But long term?

I want to maintain my interdisciplinary approach and to expand on that because I really believe in the combinations of fashion and architecture, fashion and science. So when I build the new studio, I’m also hoping to embed an innovation lab. We already work with a lot of labs and institutes all over the world, which we will continue to do, but I would love to be like an institute inside the IVH atelier where people and scientists also can come work with us.

WWD: How did you first happen upon 3D printing, and why did you think it was important to introduce to fashion?

I.v.H.: Benthem Crouwel Architekten were designing a new wing for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and they asked me to design a dress inspired by their new building. That was my first collaboration with architecture. I went to their studio, and they had all these 3D printers. I was intrigued. The building looked like a bathtub — that’s its nickname — so I want to create a water dress, because that was the missing element of this museum. It turned out that printing fully transparent material was not possible back then with the 3D printer, so I actually ended up making that dress by hand.

But I got introduced to that technique, so I later collaborated with another architect on the file making, in order to embed that in my new collection.

What was so intriguing about it is that I realized that within fashion, you always start from a two-dimensional surface, the fabric, and you use patterns to then mold it into 3D. But with the 3D printer, your level of three dimensionality and complexity is just limitless.

That said, 3D printers still have limitations. They can make materials that are flexible, but they are not as durable and flexible as a traditional silk or tulle. Still, you can 3D-print flexible materials on top of your fabric…and that’s a beautiful combination.

I do not work with techniques for the sake of the technique being interesting. It always has to be possible to translate what I have in my mind.

WWD: What drives you to such extremes: creating couture that can withstand the deepest pool in Europe or the most extreme skydiving?

I.v.H.: That is a layered answer, but I think for me, couture is a way to explore who we are as human beings. Clothes often carry a larger meaning than just comfort, or protection. They’re often a medium, to say who we are, what we believe in, sometimes even to communicate about the unseen world, like the invisible world, the world of the spirits, or the world of religion.

I believe I am doing that in my own way. I’m trying to understand the world around me through this medium, and I’m trying to inspire people around me to look at fashion as something as meaningful as art and science, and a way to look at the world in a different way. I think art always inspires us to create a wider perspective, and science does the same thing, and I really believe how couture or fashion has that same power to expand our perceptions, to expand our knowledge.

For me, it’s a language to visualize the invisible. That’s why I keep on experimenting and collaborating.

Also, I feel really inspired by nature, and I think a lot of people nowadays have lost a certain connection to the living world around them.

When you live in a city especially, it’s easy to not feel that connection with trees, animals, everything that sustains us and keeps us alive, not only physically, but also mentally. It’s really important to feel that connection and through my work, I’m feeding that connection. People feel and see nature in my work.

I hope that the work makes you feel alive in the deepest sense, and that it inspires you to keep on exploring.

WWD: Many couturiers at big houses never interface with clients. How about you?

I.v.H.: When I design a custom dress for someone, it’s really like an abstract portrait that I’m making for someone. I’m trying to bring in their interests, what is meaningful for them. I love talking to them, getting to know them, and some clients I’ve known since a long time. So it’s a very intuitive process.

When a client puts on the look that we’ve created for the very first time, that is just such an emotional moment for all of us.

WWD: You decided to show a collection only once a year. Do you think fashion would be in a better place if it slowed down?

I.v.H.: It’s so essential. It’s the number-one thing! I think fashion needs to slow down in terms of the amount of collections that are being released. It would be better for everyone, honestly.

I’m really happy with my own decision.…I totally understand that for big brands, it’s really difficult, but I do believe it’s possible.

I am 100 percent convinced that if all the designers were given a little bit more time, the quality of ideas would just improve. It’s so obvious, but if you are constantly in production mode, with too little time to even think, then there is no space for new ideas.