Collaborations
‘SENSORY SEAS’
SS 2020 COUTURE
Iris van Herpen shows her latest collection ‘Sensory Seas’ at Paris Haute Couture week on January 20th 2020 at Cirque d’Hiver, Paris.
For this collection, Iris van Herpen draws inspiration from the sensory processes that occur between the intricate composition of the human body, mirrored with the fibrous marine ecology of our oceans.
The first threads of inspiration came from the Spanish neuroanatomist Ramón y Cajal. He wanted to uncover something that no one had yet understood. He questioned: how does the brain engage in conversation with its counterparts? Exploring our central nervous system in microscopic detailing, Cajal documented his revolutionary findings through anatomical drawings that are considered amongst the world’s greatest scientific illustrations. Hunched over his microscope, he merged science with art and brought to life the threads of our enchanted biology to the human eye.
Other inspiration stemmed from diving into the deep depths of the Hydrozoa, a class of delicately branched sea-life organisms. Shifting between a polypoid stage and a medusa stage, the Hydrozoa embroider the oceans like aqueous fabrics, forming layers of living lace.
‘Sensory seas’ holds a microscope over the indelible nuances between the anthropology of a marine organism, to the role of dendrites and synapses delivering infinite signals throughout our bodies. It enchants the attention of how two processes of torrential messaging exist in an uninterrupted state of flux.
The collection consists 21 silhouettes that illustrate a portrait of liquid labyrinths, where dresses spill onto the floor in elegant train and pigments gather in clouded blues and lilac, leaking into one another like marble. Colourful meshworks of cellular geometry are translucently layered to create deep-sea aquarelles. Soft shades of greens, blues and gentle ochres are painted by Shelee Carruthers and juxtaposed with the warming reds of coral reefs..
