Iris van Herpen thrives off concepts that involve 3D printing, architecture and recent ideas of beauty. She’s put models in twisted silver face jewellery, and space-age eyeliner, and topped their heads off with futuristic crowns. In other words, she’s not your typical dressmaker – and he or she definitely doesn’t approach beauty in a traditional way. As an alternative, she reinterprets the concept of what beauty is, together with re-examining the feminine form.

It’s just a few days before her AW23 couture show, which is ready to happen within the garden of the Hôtel d’Avaray on July 3. From her city atelier, Herpen is fascinated by the effect that the concept of beauty itself has had on her work: “Beauty is transformation,” she says. “It’s freedom. It’s those two elements. It’s freedom in who you’re, and the way in which you express yourself. It’s not attempting to fit within the stereotypes or attempting to copy others. It’s really about finding your individual identity and daring to alter, to remodel. I believe it takes courage to not persist with an expectation that other people have of you.”

For Van Herpen’s AW23 couture collection, the designer created jagged gowns that alluded to future cities, Grecian pleated cut-out dresses fit for alien royalty, spiral pleated frocks that mirrored exotic flowers, and future-forward pieces that floated by with sprigs of geometric accents flying within the wind.

However the designer also went back to a subject that’s long been the source of inspiration for her: face jewellery. This time around, she collaborated with Malakai and Rinaldy Yunardi on metal mask-like structures that blurred the face and eschewed the features – bringing the thought of fashion as an extension of make-up, or moderately, the face – to life. “We’ve been working on designs which can be very sculptural, but airy at the identical time, in order that they’re really extending across the face and into the air in a really geometric but central way,” she says. James Kaliardos did the make-up this time around; smoky, silvery shades dabbed on the eyelids which served as a kind of parallel to the metallic pieces dripping from the models’ faces.

Face jewellery has grow to be almost intrinsic to the Iris van Herpen brand, like a phoenix rising from the proverbial ashes of traditional make-up. “It’s the subtle extension of the essence of the gathering, but focused on beauty – and the interaction between the facial features of the model,” she says. “I’m at all times trying to precise and elevate the character through the face.” Van Herpen uses face jewellery in a novel way, capturing and emphasising the faces of the models after which using make-up to emphasize their features in a way that appears each alien and futuristic.

As one of the notable women fusing fashion and technology on a big platform, Van Herpen essentially remaps the body into something entirely recent every season. Women grow to be spirited pinwheels of cloth, blossoming flowers, alien plants and cocoons of nature. She’s not eager about working to stick to the standard female form because it’s presented in society, but moderately spearheading the thought of the body transformed.

“I’m really trying on this collection to seek out the proper balance between a geographic order and a fluidity,” she says. “And it’s really the body that’s spiking the fluid side of the gathering. So to offer an example, there are looks which have very parametric, icy architectural patterns on the body, but then they’re prolonged across the model in AI, and it’s only the movement of the person wearing it that forces the patterns to start out dissembling and are available alive.”

Choosing models can be an element of her unique approach to beauty. “The models that we’re casting, they’re really characters,” she says. “They’re identities and it’s about bringing those characters forward.” The most important challenge for her? Finding the time to execute her beauty visions; she often only finalises the sweetness looks the day before the show. “It’s at all times a battle with time as well, because we only have a specific amount of time to do all of the women before the show, so it’s about trying to seek out the balance. Also, we don’t wanna overload the women. They still have to be present.”

This season, Van Herpen specifically looked to the visionary ideas of Jacques Rougerie, a French architect and oceanographer, often called the ‘Architect of the Sea’ in addition to the world’s first floating city, ‘Oceanix’ which is currently being inbuilt South Korea. “This collection is absolutely inspired by architecture,” she says. “There’s a movement which is absolutely specializing in bionic design, which suggests taking a look at nature for its systems, for its science and attempting to extract it. It’s almost as if we’re collaborating with nature moderately than extracting from it.” One incredibly majestic extension of the body was the sheer air-like fabric that spiralled around certainly one of the gesturing models – like a transparent bubble about to pop. “It’s the lightest fabric on earth, actually,” she says. “It’s developed by a Japanese company that we’ve been collaborating with.”

All this was presented outdoors, a stark contrast to Van Herpen’s previous collections but intrinsic to her vision. “This has been a dream for me for a really very long time,” she says. “I’m really enthusiastic about having my work in an environment that has been most inspiring for all of my work, which is nature.”

As she continues to forge ahead in the sector of tech and fashion, it’s clear that the sweetness side of fashion will at all times be an element of her identity – or on the very least, a pressing topic she thinks about as she evaluates her next collection. “Essentially the most beautiful people I do know are very free of their identity and the way in which they express themselves,” she says before pausing for a moment: “I believe that’s beautiful.”

Join Dazed Club and be a part of our world! You get exclusive access to events, parties, festivals and our editors, in addition to a free subscription to Dazed for a 12 months. Join for £5/month today.