To Van Herpen, fashion is the intersection of science, architecture, art, and other forms of design. “The more we start collaborating, the quicker we can move forward,” she presses. Apart from collaboration, the educational system has catching up to do. “A lot of the schools are very focused on teaching [students] how to be designers. It’s very focused on ready-to-wear, on mass production, and in the way they think a designer should behave in that old system. It’s a very isolated process, whereas in reality, as a designer, you have to collaborate with a lot of different types of people.” Van Herpen asserts that many young designers are searching for a new system. “They don’t want to repeat what has been done the last 100 years because it’s not a system for our future. They are thinking about the very early stages of the process, which is the material development. They want to be in contact with the places where they make their rules and their silks and their cottons, and they want to understand the whole process from the beginning up until the end. The academies are still teaching in a way that all of that is out of your sight. You’re just designing, making a beautiful sketch, and sending it to the factory where they make it.” Van Herpen attests that the only way to change the system today is by being in it, understanding all the different layers of the process; all the people involved from making a garment from the very beginning, right until the end, in the store.
Iris Van Herpen. Photo: Robin de Puy
While a baker is expected to know the origins and quality of the ingredients used, a jeweler about the stones employed, and a perfumer the flowers, designers are not afforded that same luxury. “Even to understand the influence of the quality of life on the animals and the quality of the material after, for example, with the wool, that’s also something I only just learned. If you only know 10% of what you’re doing, you will never be…
