Iris van Herpen continues to astound me. In addition to 3D printing some of this and using couture-grade fabric upcycled from marine debris, she spun a really lovely yarn about her creative drive for this collection and managed to make me emotionally invested in a plant:
Her use of pleating can be related back to the gills of mushrooms. Mycelium, the lace-like branching part of fungus, influenced both silhouettes and embellishments. Van Herpen even worked with an artist who grew lace patterns from wood.
Mycelium, the designer explains, forms a “wood wide web,” or underground system of communication. It’s an idea that “especially touched me,” said Van Herpen, “because I think the last year has been, for me, and I guess all of us, [one] of isolation and separation. And of course it’s really beautiful to look at nature and how nature connects in a very similar way [to] how we communicate.”
Vanessa Friedman on Twitter more or less pointed out how cool it would be to be Iris van Herpen, seeing a simple food and then turning into THIS. As usual, this entire collection should be Gwendoline Christie’s to take or leave, but I’m sure we can come up with other people as well.
