Most in fashion treat clothing as a finished product. Designers will apply their final touches, concluding their creative journey on a piece for their collections. Whether it be the final hem that is closed or seam that is sealed, the garment will eventually remain completed, patiently waiting for someone to don it. This is a common sentiment within fashion, but for Iris van Herpen, it is precisely the opposite. Her garments do not read as finalized, but instead caught during a transitional period.

Her 2010 collection titled “Crystallization” featured a dress made of transparent, malleable plastic, produced in tandem with architect Daniel Widrig. The iconic dress captures the image of a splash of water, suspended in time at the exact moment it contacts a surface. The fluidity of water is exhibited, drawing the audience to ponder the natural chaos of the unbounded liquid. If that alone fails to persuade, consider her Capriole collection, which details skeletal wing structures cascading from the shoulders in a manner that feels less like sporting clothing and more like the shedding of an old skin. Or perhaps assess her 2014 collection: “Magnetic Motion”, the result of a collaboration with an actual physicist, in which magnetic fields were used to generate intricate patterns before translating them into 3D-printed garments. This collection was not sketched out by hand, but instead grown by nature’s own physics, and Van Herpen captured it in the instants before it vanished from human perception.

It is here that Van Herpen’s true artistry becomes most apparent. A significant portion of experimental fashion remains content being deemed a theatrical performance, a spectacle designed to captivate the audience for the temporary moment a model walks by. Van Herpen is different. She instead communicates that her work is meant to be interpreted as biology rather than a gaudy parade. The exoskeletons that she 3D prints do not strike me as armor or merely a method to hold up fabric, but rather as a shell of an organism evolving into its final form. That perspective only deepens once you consider that she has partnered with actual scientists on her pieces. Van Herpen is able to construct garments that incorporate biological processes, such as silk spun by engineered bacteria and structures that are modeled on the outward branching of mycelium. These are not just distant references to living organisms. Van Herpen quite literally weaves biological processes into the framework of her designs.

This likely explains the origin of why critics will often describe her work as “alien” or “otherworldly” instead of “beautiful” and “charming.” Those soft and gentle words would allude to something that is a finished product and can be calmly observed. Viewing a Van Herpen collection instead places you in the position of observing an occurrence in real time. This is an entirely different experience than viewing traditional designers, whose pieces typically remain stagnant with regard to how time itself is conceptualized. Simply put: a conventional dress will stay invariable. It will never provoke any idea of the progression of time. A Van Herpen piece, however, even if standing entirely motionless on a runway, will read as being mid-transformation. She designs moments that capture the precise period when considerable change and physical alteration occur.

Van Herpen dispels the “it’s just wearable art” critique that many other experimental artists fall victim to. That phrase attempts to justify that despite how bizarre certain draping or silhouettes become, the garment will forever just be fabric on a body. Van Herpen’s designs reject this ideology, simply because decoration does not seem to be her only objective. Her pieces strive to answer abstract questions, such as: “what would it look like if the human body were no longer the only living thing within an outfit?”. The person wearing her garments begins to feel less like a human in a dress, and more like a host to convey natural phenomena seen in our world.

This is what distinguishes Van Herpen’s work. Even her decision to display her work on living bodies instead of mannequins excites a fascinating idea about the relationship between the wearer and the pieces themselves. To wear a creation of Van Herpen is to simultaneously co-exist with an object that prioritizes being modeled from a parasite over the functionality of a garment. When clothing is described as a “second skin”, I believe Van Herpen is one of the few designers who has made that phrase literal. Some may find this unsettling; others may find it appealing. Despite whichever side you may align with, one thing is for certain: Van Herpen is not afraid to do things differently.