Iris van Herpen

Iris van Herpen is a fashion designer based in Brooklyn, NY. She constructs garments from unconventional materials—laser-sintered polyamide, hand-formed Plexiglas, and magnetic resin—treating clothing as a system that moves with the body rather than merely covering it.

Trained in classical ballet before she ever touched a sewing machine, Iris van Herpen treats the body as a moving system: something that generates force, not just wears cloth. Her Amsterdam atelier works by making its own materials rather than selecting them: transparent Plexiglas sheets heat-formed by hand, iron filings suspended in resin by magnetic fields, selective-laser-sintered polyamide printed into skeletal lace, hand-blown glass bubbles assembled into a quantum-foam exoskeleton. The question underneath all of it is consistent: what happens when a garment is built from the logic of physics, water, or microorganisms instead of textile convention? Her more recent Sympoiesis collection pushed into living matter (algae grown into fabric) asking not just how garments are made but whether they can be kept alive.