Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion at Dallas Museum of Art

Sun, May 21 - Sun, Aug 20  2017

Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion at Dallas Museum of Art.
May 21 until August 20, 2017.

Experience the bold vision of one of today’s most original fashion designers with 45 exquisite outfits from 15 collections in Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion. Van Herpen (Dutch, born 1984) works at the nexus of fashion, design, technology, and science. With a dynamic and path-breaking body of work, she is widely heralded as a pioneering new voice in fashion. She is known for her willingness to experiment—exploring new fabrics created manipulating iron filings in resin, incorporating unexpected materials ranging from umbrella tines to magnets, and pushing the boundaries of technologies such as 3-D printing. Her work has been worn by style icons such as Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and Björk and has graced the runways of Amsterdam, London and Paris. This exhibition documents the evolution of Iris van Herpen’s couture through a selection of her collections from 2008 through 2015 and illustrates the many ways she continues to seek inspiration beyond the world of traditional handwork and craftsmanship.

About Iris van Herpen

Iris van Herpen produced her first collection in 2007, shortly after graduating from the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in the Netherlands. She is based primarily in Amsterdam. In 2012 she became a member of the exclusive Chambre Syndicale de Haute Couture, where her designs regularly appear in biannual Paris runway shows. Van Herpen divides her time between the contained world of her studio, her global network of collaborators, and the international stage of fashion. Speaking of her artistic philosophy, van Herpen says, “For me fashion is an expression of art that is very closely related to me and to my body. I see it as my expression of identity combined with desire, moods, and cultural setting. Wearing clothing creates an exciting and imperative form of self-expression. ‘Form follows function’ is not a slogan with which I concur. On the contrary, I find that forms complement and change the body and thus the emotion.”