Iris van Herpen Haute Couture Catwalk Show Paris FW2016

Dutch designer presented a moment of calm, sublime beauty and futuristic fashion wizardry during the haute couture week in Paris. Her models stood on concrete plinths as Japanese musician Kazuya Nagaya brushed his golden Zen bowls, producing pings and drones that reverberated through the L’Oratoire du Louvre, an 18th-century Protestant church.
Sound waves were the idea behind the collection, specifically cymatics, the science of visualizing sound waves into geometric patterns. Yet one needn’t understand acoustic dynamics to appreciate Van Herpen’s representation: frothy and ethereal dresses in the palest colors, the simplest a long sheath resembling morning dew on wet skin.
Van Herpen explained that the latter dress was achieved by embedding tens of thousands of Swarovski in liquid silicone. She did the same with hand-blown glass bubbles, producing a trembling, shimmering, extraterrestrial tutu.

Van Herpens world is one of laser cutting, 3-D printing and fibers five times thinner than human hair. The striped organza for halter dresses, densely pleated and then arranged in rows and swirls had to give the impression of sound waves. They were stunning.