Dutch haute couture designer Iris van Herpen says how you see the world defines how you can shape a new future

How you see the world determines the outcome. And because imagination is expansive, the possibilities are limitless. It’s what Dutch haute couturier, Iris van Herpen believes, and she has an illustrious portfolio that speaks for it. She said: “Fashion doesn’t stand alone.” It’s connected to the things around us, whether it is the arts, nature, science or architecture. When you have dialogue and collaboration between multi-disciplines, there is dynamic growth. She continued: “There is much more room for synergy between disciplines; when we have better synergy, we have more influences in shaping a new future.”

Van Herpen is in Singapore to launch her first solo Asian exhibition, Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses, which opens at the ArtScience Museum (ASM) at Marina Bay Sands on Mar 15 and runs till Aug 10. A retrospective of her works over the last 18-years, it features over 140 pieces of her most iconic outfits and accessories and cross disciplinary collaborations with architects, scientists and artists.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Singapore’s ArtScience Museum and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France (where the original Sculpting the Senses exhibition was staged from 2023 to 2024). While this Asian showcase may be more streamlined, it’s still a comprehensive and immersive capsule that unfolds across 11 zones and explores nine themes focusing on the connections between nature, fashion and the human form.

What’s unique about this Asian showcase is that it juxtaposes her clothes and accessories with curated artefacts on loan from Singapore’s Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, as well as contemporary works by local and regional artists to give it a Southeast Asian slant. One example is the 270-million-year-old fossil of a Dimetrodon (on loan from the Singapore Fossil Collectors), a prehistoric reptilian-like mammal that predates dinosaurs by over 40 million years. Featured in the Skeletal Embodiment zone, it complements her creations that explore the skeletal, muscular and connective tissues and systems of the body.

It seems odd at first that an haute couture retrospective should be staged at the ArtScience Museum, but the exhibition is a good tie-in with the museum’s 2025 programme – Mind and Body: The Art and Science of Being Human – which explores what it means to think, feel, and exist as human beings.

As Honor Hagar, vice president of ArtScience Museum shared: “We are drawn to figures who dissolve the boundaries between disciplines and Van Herpen’s designs do exactly that. She translates the hidden structures of nature and the fundamental forces of the universe into extraordinary wearable forms.”

Indeed, Van Herpen’s haute couture creations are that sweet spot where arts and science, intersect. It’s her signature, in fact.

NOT JUST ANY MATERIAL GIRL

She was the first haute couturier to feature 3D-printed designs on the runway, which was first seen in her 2010 Crystallization collection at Amsterdam Fashion Week. A turning point in her career, it was only the beginning of what was to come.

Her approach to material conventions has always been transgressive. She used precision laser cuts to create intricate patterns and experimented with injection moulding, creating specific shapes and forms to give unique textures and silhouettes to her designs. Magnetic materials and new weaving techniques gave her garments dynamic and unexpected movement; and she wasn’t above using a little robotics in her designs to push the boundaries further.

Umbrella tines became unexpected materials that could be used in a dress; steel and silk became unlikely yet surprising complementary partners, and even new materials could be upcycled from marine debris and made into spheres to accentuate a dress.

She didn’t forgo craftsmanship for innovations but instead merged the two. She drew deeply from the well of nature, while looking forward at science and technology for growth. Her ability to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue between fashion, nature, technology, architecture and science had great payoffs: It allowed her couture creations to transcend time, form, and boundaries.

Her futuristic and forward designs look like they could belong in a galaxy far away, but she also has phantasmagorical gowns befitting a Tolkien Elven princess. Her dresses are wearable sculptures, yet far from being boxy or rigid, there’s always flow and movement in her garments because she considers the body and the space around it. When you look at her creations, they almost seem to defy the law of physics. The optical illusion is intriguing but there’s also something oddly familiar that you can’t quite place. (We’ll clue you in: She has a deep fascination for nature.)

When the Met Gala has a romanticised Garden of Time (2024) dress code that explores the theme of fleeting beauty or a Gilded Glamour theme (2022) that celebrates rapid industrialisation and technological advancements, it’s the same person you call (just as Zendeya and Dove Cameron did) to make you a dress. That’s Iris van Herpen, because she makes you that red-carpet statement.

When Beyonce performed her Renaissance tour in Amsterdam, she opened the show in a custom nude-illusion dress by Van Herpen that featured a silver, scale-like design with an oversized collar detail. It made the audience fall “Dangerously in Love”, instantly. (see the Heliosphere dress for yourself at the exhibition, it’s on loan from Beyonce.)

Icelandic singer, Bjork is not just her good friend but has been a long-time collaborator since 2011. The orchid-like Sphaera dress in Cornucopia that changes shape in harmony with Bjork’s movements? Also one of Van Herpen’s.

Lady Gaga too has worn dresses by Van Herpen on multiple occasions, including the time where she wore a custom number at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards to receive the Best Collaboration Award. It’s been teased that we may soon see another Lady Gaga and Iris van Herpen collaboration for the singer’s upcoming Mayhem tour.

These are only some of the famous names that have been dressed by the 40-year-old couturier. But there’s a wall of fame at the exhibition that captures the portraits of well-known faces like Cate Blanchett and Winnie Harlow in her fantastical creations.

HAUTE COUTURE IS WEARABLE ART

While red carpets and haute couture shows in Paris get her a lot of eyeballs and fanfare, Van Herpen has a soft spot for exhibitions, because they offer a different and perhaps even more intimate way to experience the intricate complexities of her haute couture pieces.

For reference it can take 600 hours or around four to five months to work on just one of her designs. You can see why it certainly deserves more than a red-carpet moment to fully appreciate the craftsmanship and process that goes into one of her garments.

“An exhibition has a very deep connection with the audience,” she shared, because they have more time to see the piece, they can walk around it, study it from various angles and have a deeper understanding of its evolution, from concept to fruition.

It’s never just about the clothes (as exquisitely beautiful as they are). Here, every element from mood lighting to the haunting soundscapes in the background by Dutch composer and music producer, Salvador Breed, to the other artefacts of inspiration whether it’s fossil or mineral, come together to tell the story of how intricately connected and woven her works are in relation to the world at large.

SCIENCE IS A TOOL

While people might easily think of her as an innovator or a provocateur because she constantly challenges the traditional rigid dichotomies between art and science, Van Herpen sees herself as an artist and designer.

“I can be both,” she told us with quiet confidence, smilingly. “I don’t have to choose.”

There is a common misconception that she’s a scientist. She’s not. She said that “innovation is just part of my process.” For instance, it allows her to produce shapes that are impossible to achieve using conventional production methods.

DESIGN IS NOT A LINEAR PROCESS

She experimented with AI a bit and didn’t like it much, saying the “creative process needs to be kept simple and pure – it’s sacred and personal, intuitive and emotional.”

“Experimentation is what defines the design”, and that’s the part of the process she gets most excited about. It’s not a linear journey, but a fluid organic one that involves collaboration and exchanges of ideas, time for deliberation and meditation and work in the studio. Van Herpen does not sketch ideas on paper but instead drapes fabric directly onto the mannequin (her signature moulage technique) until she finds a silhouette she’s happy with, a process that she likens to sculpting.

She acknowledges that the beginning of creating something new is always very precious to her, “it’s pure and simple” and it’s a challenge to let go of control to view things with fresh eyes. When something doesn’t turn out the way she imagines it – maybe the colour isn’t right, or she’s not quite satisfied with the shape or how a garment flows – it doesn’t get binned. Instead, it gets archived as a sample which may then see revival in a future project.

A SLOW AND DELIBERATE FASHION

That’s one obvious advantage of haute couture: You’re not in a rush to put things out. Van Herpen is all for a slow, deliberate fashion that makes for a better collection, one that is more conscious with greater environmental awareness.

Haute couture has the sustainability advantage in that you only create on demand and produce pieces on commission.  There’s no surplus or wastage in that way.

Her atelier also partners with external companies and work on developing original and sustainable alternative materials, like silk made from the fibre of banana plants to use in her collections. Another partnership with environmental non-profit, Parley For The Oceans, has created textiles made from plastics collected from the ocean.

Iris van Herpen: Sculpting The Senses is on at the ArtScience Museum, MBS, from 15 March to 10 August. Tickets are from $22 (adults) for Singapore residents; and $27 for tourists. Book your tickets here.