Iris van Herpen | Shift Souls

Unimaginable Deign

Fashion is often called an art form. Some do not agree with this idea and feel it is cliche.

But I dare you to watch this video and not feel transported or emotional or pose questions. Those points are exactly what art does when done correctly. It doesn’t tell you how to be. But you find yourself immersed in a piece with your own generated feelings and at times it can create an internal dialogue of wondering and hoping to understand.

Iris van Herpen does this to the human body. One of, if not the only master of creating garments that are this provocative. Her expression of using none idealistic materials is not new. It’s been done many times. But never on the level of success and mastery as her’s. Words like “genius” are used to describe her; and I would not argue.

For some, it brings us forward through the world of fashion. This is the next incarnation of couture type pieces. She brings us the next step while others are on the ever rotating circle of societal and past influence.

Read below from Iris van Herpen’s Youtube post of “Shift Souls.”

*The collection was inspired by early examples of celestial cartography and its representations of mythological and astrological chimera, Van Herpen was particularly taken with “Harmonia 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/anima 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.

“For ‘Shift Souls’ I looked at the evolution of the human shape, its idealization through time and the hybridization of the female forms within mythology. Specially the imagination and the fluidity within identity change in Japanese mythology gave me the inspiration to explore the deeper meaning of identity and how immaterial and mutable it can become within the current coalescence of our digital bodies” — Iris van Herpen

*Content Credit: Iris van Herpen’s Youtube channel. Please subscribe to her channel for more brilliance.