Sent to you by redcliff via Google Reader:
>> Alright, I've been far, far and away from the normal posting routine. It's been a weirdly scheduled bout of selfish me time in Paris that involves real eye-to-eye chatting with friends I haven't seen in an age, reading books in cliched cafes, riffling through depot vente stores - I say weird because of course the haute couture shows have been going on and I'm hardly partaking in the activities. I was curious to see Iris Van Herpen, Dutch material wizardess presenting her latest collection in Paris. She doesn't have an official haute couture appellation but I suppose doing it off-schedule in what is a sparse and spread out 'week', is apt for Van Herpen whose work is most definitely NOT ready to wear. In fact, wear may not apply at all for Iris Van Herpen's designs, which as far as I know don't have any stockists and it seems as her collections have progressed, the real intent of Van Herpen is to continue to research and push the levels of using unusual materials.
There were many things you could marvel at as the show moved at a slow pace to allow the models to move properly but in particular, I was most interested in the use of 3D printing, created in collaboration with architect Daniel Widrig and the company .MGX by Materialise. The company specialises in creating prototypes for furniture or cars and this is the first time they have engaged with a fashion designer to created these 3D printed pieces that are completely without any seams, requiring no sewing machine/handiwork.
These pieces are generated from a .MGX file that renders a design created originally from CAD, printable. Hence why I've shoved .MGX file in the title, imagining a time when designs could conceivably be PRINTED out to create 3-D garments - you can read more about the science of it here. Of course the rigidness is a factor that perhaps will change in the future allowing for softer materials to also be 'printed' out making Van Herpen's work here something of a starting point from which further exploration needs to be carried out.
In other collaborative efforts, Van Herpen worked with Stephen Jones to create six hats that represent the five senses and an additional 6th sense. I particularly loved the speaker box hat that had sound trailing out of it, running in tandem with the main soundtrack. Plus it's also wonderful to know that when Van Herpen approached Jones to work with her at his exhibition at the Momu in Antwerp, he had already known about her work - good to know that the big guns keep track of what's going on across the board...
Van Herpen is also working with United Nude again with the scattered plastic embellishment created by artist Bart Hess...
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