The Aesthetics of Science: Iris Van Herpen’s Voltage Haute Couture Collection

For her fourth collection presented in Paris as a guest member of the Chambre syndicale de la Haute Couture, Iris van Herpen explores the electricity of the body in her ostentatious Voltage Haute Couture Collection.

Iris Van Herpen’s Voltage Haute Couture Collection

Experimenting with its use in the field of creation, this collection seeks to portray its tangible movement and power.

This ability of light and electricity to change states and bodies is reproduced using the most innovative technologies. Described as an alchemist approach to fashion, Van Herpen’s designs perpetually embrace new collaborations with artists, architects and researchers. As part of the show she collaborated with new Zealand artist Carlos Van Camp, echoing his notion of controlling high voltage electricity and its interaction with the human body.

Van Camp experiments with three million volts running through bodies.

Iris Van Herpen’s Voltage Haute Couture Collection

Van Herpen shares Canadian architect Philip Beesley’s fascination with materials and structures.

They focus specifically on how the reaction of chemistry and electricity causes structures to respond to their environment and react as living beings.

Iris van Herpen is also know for being today’s leading fashion designer in the use of 3D printing. Drawing on the idea of movement, the flexible 3D printed dresses are a revolution, a result of collaborations with Neri Oxman of the MIT Media Lab as well as Keren Oxman and Prof. Craig Carter of MIT with Stratasys, and architect Julia Koerner with Materialise.