3D Printing

After graduating from Arnhem’s ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in 2006 and completing a stint working for Alexander McQueen in London and the Dutch artist Claudy Jongstra—van Herpen has singly (and single-mindedly) become fashion’s leading exponent of what technology can do and what it will mean for us. She sidesteps categorization as a designer, preferring to let whoever sees or, indeed, wears her work to choose how to describe it: Fashion? Art? Or simply, quite possibly, the future?

Making her first pieces using 3D Printing techniques in 2009, van Herpen has been at the forefront of the industry ever since. She has a vast relationship with the TU Delft and collaborates regularly with their engineers, and while her first 3D-works took approximately 6 days x 24 hours of printing, now she is able to quickly print flexible materials.

3D Laser Cutting

Achieving the perfect mix of technology and creativity, van Herpen collaborated with the TU Delft to develop two different laser-cutting techniques for her Ludi Natura collection:

‘Data Dust,’ in which parametric patterns are computationally distorted, foam-lifted, laser-cut and then heat-bonded onto an invisible silk tulle, creates radiant glitches.

‘Entropy,’ in which nude leather and liquid fabric are bonded to mylar, individually laser-cut into perforated diminishing patterns, and interwoven to form interlocking gradients from leather to drape voluminously.

Immersive Installation:
Swarovski

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Swarovski’s Kristallwelten flagship store in Vienna, van Herpen was invited to take over the space with five experimental art installations. For one of the works, model and artist Lekeliene Stange was 3D-scanned and modeled to create a larger-than-life woman’s head.

Kristallwelten is one of three Swarovski stores in Austria in operation with the aim of fusing art and lifestyle to ‘transform Swarovski crystal into a living experience.’ Van Herpen’s work for the company gets straight to this point: Biomorphism – the body of installations created for the store – is the designer’s ode to the performance of femininity.

Architecture:
Biodiversity Center

In collaboration with Neutelings Riedijk Architects, van Herpen wrapped the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, The Netherlands in over 1000 meters of delicate concrete friezes that merge fossil forms with the fabric of the designer’s collections.

Each of the orange stone blocks, which contain the museum’s nine galleries, is wrapped in a frieze designed by van Herpen that combines couture fashion with rock formations and fossils, while each of the 263 panels that wrap the blocks were molded from concrete and small-grained white marble aggregate to create a delicate feel that is reminiscent of fabric.

To create the form, van Herpen looked at numerous stone formations and fossils within the museum’s collections, as well as traveling to see formations in nature.

Performance:
Björk: ‘Cornucopia’

A longtime collaborator of Björk’s, van Herpen partnered with the performance artist on her most elaborated staged concert to date: ‘Cornucopia’ at New York’s new cultural hub, the Shed at Hudson Yards.

Van Herpen’s collections are often architectural in ambition and appear as if they descended from the future or a parallel universe. For this collaboration, the designer created the ‘Sphaera’ dress, inspired by an orchid-avatar that hovers like an aura around Björk’s body, continuing to change shape as she moved across the stage. In collaboration with the light artist Nick Verstand, the ‘Sphaera’ dress turned into a bioluminescent creature during the performance

Commissions:
Met Gala

Her first couture commission for a man, legendary theatre producer Jordan Roth, van Herpen created a custom look styled by Vogue’s Michael Philouze for the Met Gala.

The multi-layered look initially presented as an optical illusion of a closed theatre curtain. When Jordan raised his arms, thousands of laser-cut ‘glitch-bubbles’ stretched open to reveal a new layer in between; an enormous silk fabric printed with a full theater in 360° combining photos of Paris’s Palais Garnier, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Royal Opera in Stockholm taken by photographer David Leventi. Every movement Jordan made became an amplified wave of theatre that tricked the eyes.

Costume Design:
Pelléas et Mélisande

A former ballet dancer herself, van Herpen has created costumes for the Paris Opera and the New York City Ballet, collaborating with the choreographer Benjamin Millepied and the Sasha Waltz dance company in Berlin.

In collaboration with Opera Vlaanderen, she served as Costume Designer for its breathtaking production of the Claude Debussy opera ‘Pelléas et Mélisande.’ Debuting in Antwerp, Debussy’s famously dark and disturbing masterwork also featured set design by Marina Abramović and an abstract video backdrop by Marco Brambilla.

Design Collaboration:
United Nude

Positioning itself at the intersection of design and fashion, Rem D Koolhaas’s United Nude has collaborated with van Herpen on nine collections of highly conceptual architectural heels.

The ‘Fang’ shoe, the product of their fifth successful collaboration, has ten sharp teeth to each foot and the shape of the wedge is so complex that each one consists of fiberglass and carbon fiber, made in a slow molding process. In the well-received ‘Biopiracy’ collection, which emerged from astonishment of companies’ patented human genes, van Herpen experimented with living objects, kinetic architecture and physical interaction through fashion.

Exhibitions

Van Herpen’s work has been featured in various museum exhibitions, including a major retrospective touring the United States since 2015, beginning with a six-month long run at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Six of her dresses were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and seven of her works were exhibited in its highly successful 2016 ‘Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology’ show. In addition to the above, van Herpen’s creations have been exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Cooper Hewitt museum in New York, and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, among others.

Celebrity Dressing

With her distinct aesthetic viewpoint, van Herpen has dressed numerous progressive musicians and actresses such as Björk (for whose videos and tours van Herpen has created several dresses), Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Cara Delvingne, Daphne Guinness, Miley Cyrus, Gwendoline Christie, Fan Bing Bing, Lady Gaga, Naomi Campbell, Solange Knowles, Natalia Vodianova, and Grimes. Her special projects included dressing the actress Scarlett Johannson in the film ‘Lucy’ and dressing Beyoncé for her ‘Mine’ video.