In a previous post in 2016 we mentioned Spanish neuroscientist and pathologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 - 1934) and looked at his work.
As you may remember, the Spanish scientist identified the role of neurons in the nervous system as proved by his early 1900s studies showing human neonatal astrocytes, motor sensitive patterns, afferents to the cortex and ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system.
At the end of that feature we suggested that Ramón y Cajal's studies may have been turned into the inspiration for a fashion collection and maybe textile designers could have employed them to create intriguing patterns.
Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen seemed to have taken up the Ramón y Cajal challenge in her S/S 20 Haute Couture collection, showcased last week in Paris.
Entitled "Sensory Seas", the collection used Spanish neuroanatomist Ramón y Cajal as the main starting point.
Van Herpen must have studied his drawings, combining art and science, illustrating the arborizations ("tree growing") of brain cells to create the first designs in the collection and in particular the opening look, a black evening gown with a corset that seemed to stem from a root structure, almost replicating Ramón y Cajal's motor sensitive patterns.
This first inspiration was then combined with a marine theme with van Herpen turning to the creatures living in the oceans, tiny marine organisms of the kind you may see in documentaries like Andy Byatt and Alastair Fothergill's "Deep Blue" (2003; written by David Attenborough).
Among such organisms there are the Hydrozoa, a taxonomic class of small and delicate yet predatory sea-life organisms, some solitary and some colonial, most living in salt water.
By observing the Hydrozoa, van Herpen came up with a comparison between the living lace-like configurations they form in the oceans and hand-made lace, and between the structure of Hydrozoa and the dendrites and synapses delivering infinite signals throughout our bodies.
This comparison produced ample liquid dresses with soft blue, green and lilac watercolour-like prints painted by Shelee Carruthers, at times reminiscent of the deep sea shades from Alexander McQueen's "Plato's Atlantis" collection, soft and flowing voluminous gowns in which the fabric seemed alive and mimicked the movement of deep-sea creatures, diaphanous jellyfish and algae or reminded of clusters of fire corals.
Discovering the innovative techniques behind each design is the real highlight of the collection: Ramón y Cajal's anatomical drawings inspired the "Labrynthine" technique, consisting in 3D lasercut silk dendrites heatbonded to leaves of black transparent organza and then hand-embroidered onto lasercut exoskeletons.
The "Hypertube" looks consisted instead in 3D printing a single-line web with white silicone thread onto black silk-chiffon, the thread twisting and turning down the body. For the "Dendrite Waves" dresses, organza circles were multilayered and heat-bonded to 3D lasercut dendrites of black cotton that formed on the body asymmetric waves.
The "Hydrozoa" technique consisted in cellular aquarelles of dark purples and turquoise oil-painted and multi-layered into hundreds of transparent lasercut PetG bubbles.
The "Morphogenesis" technique was designed with Van Herpen's long-term collaborator, architect Philip Beesley: drawing from geostrophic turbulence patterns, 3D twisted vortex models were created employing the Rhino software, numbered and sliced into 3mm distance, and then cut on the KERN lasercutter with a triangulated grid of chevron-holes. Grasshopper scripts smoothened the processes of lofting, slicing and nesting.
Each layer was embellished by hand with a grid of minuscule transparent chevrons, creating infinite flexible forms expanding and contracting around the body.
The show set also featured lightwave sculptures, designed by British kinetic artist Paul Friedlander, made from one thread only that transformed frequency into shape and created an immaterial sensory sea-like structure around the models.
By exploring micro and macro worlds (at times uncharted worlds - think about the creatures living in the darkest and deepest parts of the oceans), van Herpen keeps on proving that couture combined with technology can produce innovative experiments and that the future of fashion is definitely in this balance between high-tech and hand-crafted techniques, and in a healthy juxtaposition of disciplines like biology and fashion, science and art, neurology and textile design.
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