In 1935, Le Corbusier published "Aircraft", an essay in which he stated he was grateful for the architectural lesson the aerial view gave him. But, as seen in previous posts, the aerial view has inspired not just architects, but fashion designers as well who have tried to come up with collections in which prints, motifs and colours were borrowed from this unique point of view.
Iris van Herpen took things further in her Autumn/Winter 2021 Haute Couture collection, entitled "Earthrise".
Rather than limiting herself to the aerial perspective, she used as starting point for her new designs the "space" view, and in particular an iconic picture - "Earthrise" - taken aboard Apollo 8 by Bill Anders and showing the Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon, with astronauts Anders, Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell aboard.
The photograph prompted van Herpen to think about astronauts looking at the Earth and seeing a spherical living and breathing organism in the infinite vastness of space.
This otherworldly perspective and cosmic view inspired her a series of ingenious gowns, from the "Sphaera Mundi" dress (better appreciated in a video posted on van Herpen's Facebook page that allows you to see how it moves) to the "Eclipse" gown.
The former was created in collaboration with artist Casey Curran and feature layers of white, azure and blue swirling circles kinetically moving, inspired by the butterfly effect (every action and movement reflects on something else) and a metaphor for our interconnected lives (an aspect that we had maybe forgotten but that Coronavirus has prompted us to remember in the most tragic way possible).
The latter features instead a myriad of white spheres with a fine laser-cut outline. Each sphere variates in texture and is meticulously hand-cut and hand-stitched in overlapping size gradients to create a multilevel layered optical illusion. The same technique was replicated for shorter dresses in blue and violet in which the spheres created cosmic intricacies.
All the discs for these gowns were made with Parley Ocean Plastic®️, a material developed by environmental organization Parley for the Oceans (van Herpen already collaborated with them in a previous collection).
The 19-look collection also featured gowns with alien-like motifs reminiscent of designs from previous seasons and a few short dresses that, though interesting for their silhouettes that called to mind Rorschach inkblot tests and symmetrical abstract ink stains, called to mind the shapes of the mini-dresses in Alexander McQueen’s "Plato's Atlantis".
The collection - that also features face jewellery by James Merry that went from nose pieces to congealed laser-cut copper glasses inspired by whale teeth - includes three gowns in collaboration with Rogan Brown.
The French-British artist is better known for his intricate hand-cut layered fragile sculptures inspired by natural science illustrations and photographs.
All the designs integrate lace-like elements inspired by fronds or mysterious creatures, relief sculptures made from multiple hand and laser-cut layers of delicately recycled Parley for the Oceans fabric individually hand-stitched onto the bodice (some of you may have spotted Catrinel Marlon wearing one of these designs on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival, that is currently on).
The design that best explored the theme of the immensity of space in this collection was the result of another collaboration between van Herpen and Poitiers-based French female world-champion skydiver Domitille Kiger.
Creating the Skydiver Gown was particularly tricky as fittings had to be done not in an atelier, but at the City Skydive wind tunnel in Utrecht and at an air field in England.
The process was long and based on trials and errors as van Herpen had to use a fabric and embellishments that could resist the force of the wind during the athlete's 300-kilometer-per-hour free fall to earth.
Besides, the designer had to make sure that the decorative elements and shape of the dress weren't a hindrance to the opening of the parachute. So it wouldn't be wrong to say that the forces of nature, and the wind in particular, became the co-designers of this gown.
The process wasn't easy as Kiger usually wears tight-fitting technical jumpsuits and not long couture gowns, but, with her help, van Herpen found the perfect material for this purpose - a stretchable neoprene composite, that was covered with hand-stitched discs in a palette of azure, blue and white.
The video of the descent in Bassin d’Arcachon, France, looks like a perfect choreography (the behind-the-scene video with Kiger and the cameraman Alexandre Aimard filming her is also striking as the two seem to be dancing in the air) and it is also very moving: indeed, seeing Kiger looking like an angel fading away towards the sun makes you want to cry.
The result of this collaboration between a fashion designer and a skydiver was a perfect combination of crafts and technology that also invited people to ponder about the dichotomy between fragility and durability (via sustainability) and rejoice at the possibility of being free and enjoy vast skies and sublime landscapes (like the ones seen in the editorial for this collection) after this long pandemic, while proving that couture can actually be worn for extreme purposes as well.
"She embodies adventure, exploration and fearlessness, the elements that I challenge to explore within fashion, taking Couture and tradition into new heights," the designer states about Kiger on her Facebook page. Guess even Le Corbusier would have appreciated this aerial performance with a couture twist.
IVH SKYDIVE FOOTAGE from Couture_shows1 on Vimeo.
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