For her Fall/Winter 2015-16 ready-to-wear collection, presented in Paris on March 10th, 2015 at the Palais de Tokyo, Iris van Herpen explores ideas of terraforming –modifying the biosphere of another planet to resemble that of Earth. The collection explores the possibility of new geographies and our place within them. The desire to reconfigure space finds expression in light performative materials, which interact with the movement of the body, biomimetic structures and saturated spectral colors. The central geometry is the circle, in both silhouette and cut. The spherical shape of planetary bodies and the symbol of a boundless ‘hackable’ infinity unfolds before us in a constant flow of mandala-like forms.
Hand plisseed geometries both follow and frame the body while optical lighting film belts propose a polymorphic silhouette and challenge our perception of the figure in space. This season Van Herpen has developed an extremely light, translucent stainless steel weave, hand burnished to imprint a sheen of nebula-like colors, whose infinite variations make each garment unique. One weave like a mineral geology encases the body while the other cushions it with a light linear grid, threaded and fringed with a raw edge.
Info and images © Iris Van Herpen