Iris Van Herpen’s Spring 2020 Couture Collection Merges Fashion And Biology
The Dutch designer turned the runway into an aquarium.
Iris van Herpen’s latest couture collection, aptly named “Sensory Sea” is as the name suggests, inspired by marine life. The designer explored the branching forms of dendrites and deep-sea hydrozoa organisms that lent their wispy tendrils and their natural and varied states of movement to her dresses. Other inspiration for her SS20 designs stemmed from the illustrations of Spanish neuroscientist and pathologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal in her SS20 designs.
Models swished around the showspace stage like marine animals, dressed in 3D Vortex dresses which created a series of optical illusions. Prints also perfectly blended into the skin as did soft spines that emerged from it, or concretions of fabric that opened into honeycomb structures. The Dutch designer also collaborated with Philip Beesley to produce a stand-out dress made of fine white screen-printed mesh layers.
For this collection, there were also gowns that were traditionally crafted and printed with rivulets of red, black and blue running down the shoulder and flowing towards the ground in great swathes of fabric.
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