Iris Van Herpen Couture Fall 2021
As space travel becomes a “thing,” Iris Van Herpen turned the focus back on our blue planet in a spectacular way.
The short film for her fall couture collection brings a lump to the throat and elicits wonderment with models seemingly levitating on top of the Dolomites, their dramatic sleeves fluttering or hovering in mid-air. (Spoiler alert: There’s a trampoline supervisor in the credit roll.) And then there’s elite skydiver Domitille Kiger plummeting headfirst towards Earth — for real — in a heavily embroidered gown that stretches and twitches traveling at 300 kilometers per hour.
Van Herpen said the collection was inspired by Kiger’s artistic, choreographed free-flying – and also the landmark photo “Earthrise,” captured by the Apollo 8 crew of our planet peeking out from beyond the lunar surface.
“It’s really this otherworldly perspective that I wanted to bring in as an energy into this collection,” she said in an interview. “And in that sense, it was really a perfect match in what Domitille is doing because it’s really beautiful how she is playing with the elements and pushing her own boundaries of what it is to be human, and also how we can extend or transcend our boundaries.”
Creating Kiger’s gown certainly pushed Van Herpen’s Amsterdam atelier to the limit.
