For many, the merging of fashion and technology means ‘wearables’ like the Apple Watch. But for Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, technology is the key to a weird wonderland of creative possibilities where materials innovations — not gadgets — offer the most potential.

Van Herpen’s Autumn Winter 2015 ready-to-wear show broke new terrain with an assemblage of refined womenswear that fused delicate handcraft with high tech. The collection included dresses made with a hand-burnished, translucent meta-weave of stainless steel and silk. Van Herpen’s signature use of 3D printing surfaced in the shoes, which were crafted from digitally fabricated “crystal clusters” and laser-cut leather netting.

Van Herpen graduated from the Art Institute of Arnhem ArtEZ and worked for Alexander McQueen before launching her own label. And, indeed, there is something of McQueen’s otherworldly imagination in Van Herpen’s work. “I use technology as a creative tool, not as a functional end product; to create a shape, silhouette or structure that I cannot make by hand; to create a fabric that has a completely new behaviour; to create a dress that is built from hundreds of thousands microscopic layers, like a fingerprint. I get highly excited when I discover a new direction for my process through a new technology.”

Iris van Herpen will be exclusive to 4 for Autumn Winter 2015.

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