_F_rom the 21st until the 24th of January 2019, Paris became the centre for new haute couture spring collections as international fashion designers demonstrated their new works on the runway. The Dutch presence at Paris’ Haute Couture Fashion Week did not go by unnoticed. Dutch fashion designers such as Iris van Herpen, Viktor & Rolf, and Ronald van der Kemp sparked international attention and press coverage. To get in the mood for Fashion Week New York, we created a comprehensive overview of the styles the renowned designers revealed as their new spring collections, along with the praise from the American press.

Viktor&Rolf

Dutch designer duo Viktor&Rolf presented their latest haute couture collection, titled “FASHION STATEMENTS” on January 23rd, 2019 in Paris.

An investigation into the expressive power of clothing.

This season, Viktor&Rolf present a group of exaggerated romantic tulle dresses in their haute couture spring/summer collection. Volumes are grand but airy, with transparent ruffles, flounces and bows. The colourful collection is entirely executed in 8 kilometers of tulle.

The silhouettes, sculptural and extreme, ranging from various A-lines to hourglass, are astutely expressive: each dress provides the backdrop for a bold text which is executed in layers of laser cut tulle. These texts are mainly one-liners: slogans with the kind of simplification typical of social media captions or souvenir t-shirts. The juxtaposition of these seemingly unrelated elements results in a typical Viktor&Rolf expression of surreal beauty.

Courtesy of Viktor & Rolf

TIME

Courtesy of Viktor & Rolf

Vogue

Courtesy of Viktor & Rolf

Harpers Bazaar

Courtesy of Viktor & Rolf

Quartzy

Courtesy of Viktor & Rolf

Iris van Herpen

Dutch designer Iris van Herpen presented her latest haute couture collection, titled “Shift Souls,” on January 21st, 2019 in Paris.

The collection was inspired by early examples of celestial cartography and its representations of mythological and astrological chimera. Van Herpen was particularly taken with “Harmonica Macrocosmica,” a star atlas by the German-Dutch cartographer Andreas Cellarius, published in 1600. With the advances in DNA engineering and the first successful creations of human//animal hybrids called ‘Cybrids’, the mythological dreams of Humankind since the dawn of civilization are shifting to the canvas of science. While the scientific and ethical implications of “Cybrids’ are still unclear, this collection expresses the fact that this reality is upon us.

Find more info on ‘Shift Souls’ here.

Courtesy of Iris van Herpen

Vogue

Courtesy of Iris van Herpen

Harpers Bazaar

Courtesy of Iris van Herpen

New York Times

Courtesy of Iris van Herpen

The Washington Post

Ronald van der Kemp

Dutch designer Ronald van der Kemp presented his latest Haute Couture collection, on January 23rd, 2019 in Paris.

Ronald van der Kemp’s new spring 2019 collection at Paris fashion week was a broad collection of revamped and upcycled fabrics into haute couture designs. Van der Kemp demonstrated that even haute couture fashion cannot escape the move to a more environmentally friendly world in which sustainable and recycled fashion is a must. Van der Kemp created haute couture looks from material cast-offs and recycled them into one-of-a-kind designs.

Photography by Shoji Fuji | Courtesy of Ronald van der Kemp

WWD

Photography by Shoji Fuji | Courtesy of Ronald van der Kemp

i-D

Photography by Shoji Fuji | Courtesy of Ronald van der Kemp

Vogue

Photography by Shoji Fuji | Courtesy of Ronald van der Kemp

Vogue