Iris van Herpen Brand
Iris Van Herpen Presents Her New Haute Couture Autumn Winter 2025-26 Collection: Sympoiesis
Luxferity, 15.07.2025
A sense of urgency laps at every facet of Sympoiesis, the new collection presented by Iris van Herpen at Paris Haute Couture Week on July 7, 2025. For nearly two decades, the couturier has worked in communion with the primordial rhythm of the organic and the human imperative of the technological. Within Sympoiesis manifests the growing fragility of their interdependence.
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To navigate the fracturing symbiosis, Van Herpen turns to the expansive, life-giving force of the ocean as a conceptual gateway, bearing witness to its ecological transformation and transcribing it into cloth via translucently layered textures, liquidised forms, and silhouettes that surge and wane as the tide. Guided by James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, the designer examines the ocean not as a singular ecosystem but as part of a wider biospheric consciousness. “The ocean and the atmosphere and the climate are all coupled. They are not independent systems; they are tightly woven together in a self-regulating fabric,” mused Lovelock. Therefore, the collection explores how we are one with the ocean, the largest and most important ecosystem on our planet that generates more than half of the oxygen we breathe.
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Seeking to convey not only the ocean’s state of peril but its innate beauty in the collection too, Van Herpen draws upon the freeform movement of Loie Fuller to embody the full spectrum of its forms, from its wild tidal power to its amorphous organisms . The pioneering muse and dancer, who van Herpen has long been inspired by as a trained dancer herself, embraced the unpredictability of fabric in motion, shrouding herself in silk and using bamboo wands to expand the improvised phantasmal shapes she drew with her body. “She seems to be in dialogue with the forces of nature in her performances. In my eyes she was an alchemist of movement, light, and fabric, with which she merged dance into sculpture,”Van Herpen says.
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As the show opens with a performance created in collaboration with light artist Nick Verstand, Fuller’s moves are thrown into the future as near-invisible Japanese airfabric becomes a light painting. As if she is leaving her solid body, the voluminous phantom silhouettes radiate organic patterns of light that are activated by the movements of the dancer in real time. “The dancer becomes morphogenic and more-than-human, seeming to shimmer in and out of perception, often being swallowed entirely into this bioluminescent creature,” says Van Herpen. “The show opening is an emotionally charged performance on how we have drained the life out of our oceans. It is a call for protection.” Sympoiesis draws this thread out in a pioneering collaboration with biodesigner Chris Bellamy - a, first-of-its-kind living look, inhabited by 125 million bioluminescent algae which emit light in response to movement. Grown in sea-water baths over several months within a specialised nutrient gel, the Pyrocystis Lunula algae were moulded into an protective membrane then attentively cared for in conditions to mimic their natural marine home, with humidity, temperature, and circadian rhythm all tuned to their precise needs. The chamber in which the living look is nurtured becomes, therefore, a microcosm of the ocean’s delicate balancing point. Caring for the garment, and for the 125 million Pyrocystis Lunula it contains, requires a symbiotic relationship and redefines the creation traditions entirely, as the garment is cultivated rather than constructed.
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As the living look emerges, a biosphere light portal grows around it - another Verstand light sculpture - and a hopeful turning point is proffered in the meeting of an animate ecosystem and a sacred sanctuary. The ecological choreography and unbound energy that run through the collection now become not relics of the past but portals into an abundant future.
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A bespoke fragrance by master perfumer Francis Kurkdjian unfolds like a wave as each look emerges to create an immersive and evocative multi-sensory experience, expressing the rich depths of underwater life - mysterious yet luminous. “Perfume is an invisible wave, a breath of the soul that may prolong the movement of a garment,” says Kurkdjian about the collaboration. “For Iris Van Herpen, I wanted an olfactory score that extends the poetry of her silhouettes, a fragrance like a full immersion: deep, aquatic, familiar yet almost unreal, surreal. I imagined a sensory and luminous flow, enigmatic and vibrant.”
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Van Herpen’s prevailing dedication to exploring new textile technologies washes over the entire collection, and the promise of life is captured spectacularly in another collaborative addition — a new kinetic look created with artist Casey Curran. Connected by an undulating golden coil-vein armature, delicate wings flutter gently in a wave-like rhythm, their silhouette inspired by a microscopic view of the structure of bioluminescent algae.
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The designer was “turned upside down” by David Attenborough’s documentary ‘Ocean’, a searing exploration of the ecological importance of the seas and marine life, the vastness of undiscovered species, and the magnitude of climate damage and human destruction. But it offered hope too, showing how marine wonders bounce back much quicker than anticipated when they are protected by sanctuaries, so-called ‘safe zones’.
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The wonder of the Dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish, is captured in Japanese airfabric that drifts like currents suspended within moon-curved bonings laser-cut from translucent carbon fibre. “Gradient dyed from sweet peach to deep plum, the silhouettes dissolve in motion, as if painted by currents beneath the surface,” says Van Herpen. That very oceanic symbiosis is also woven into the gravity-defying Noosphere look, where painterly shades of green and blue are dyed onto billowy organza panels, forming a dramatically deep-sea silhouette through featherlight carbon fibre bonings. Our entanglement with the ocean and its lifeforms runs deep, van Herpen tells us with this collection, and Sympoiesis submits its beauty and vitality as the catalysts for collaborative preservation.
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Coral-like colonies are constructed from Brewed Protein - a novel fermented fibre by biotech company Spiber - which has been laser cut and heat bonded to sheer organza. Meanwhile, ivory silk is draped upside down onto wave-shaped casts and coated with a fine layer of resin, becoming a cresting wave held in suspension - just before the chaos of the rolling crash. Completing the collection, handcrafted shoes created in collaboration with Rombaut emanate cascading metal halos which echo the structure of sonar waves.
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“This collection is a collaboration with nature itself. In this time of ecological emergency and biodiversity loss, biodesign invites us to rethink the way we ‘use’ materials, to visualise a future where all human design is not just inspired by nature, but integrated with it,” says Van Herpen. “It highlights the interdependence between humans and nature, viewing the body not as isolated, but as an ecosystem - where fashion becomes alive, responsive, and deeply connected with the natural world.”
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