The 2020 book Entangled Life by mycologist Merlin Sheldrake notes that ‘fungi is the ecological connective tissue, the living seam by which much of the world is stitched into relation.’ His ideas formed an unlikely yet seminal reference for the Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, whose Spring Summer 2021 haute couture collection of quivering fungi-inspired dresses titled ‘Roots of Rebirth’ was presented as a digital series of interconnected imagery and videos this season.
Van Herpen has been pushing an interdisciplinary exchange between fashion, technology and science since she first began as a designer — her mastery of hand and machine craft has conjured just about every pattern in nature: plant membranes, feathers, fossils, fins, and now the moving tentacles of fungi-lamella membranes. This season she explored Sheldrake’s concept of the rich yet deeply fragile ‘Wood Wide Web’ — an idea that encompasses the vast and intricate collaborative structure that join fungi to one another in an invisible underground network.
Ahead of her time, for years Van Herpen has sought out technology in order to find new techniques for bringing her garments to life. Collaborating with scientists, biologists, and architects has been fundamental in her creative process, merging different disciplines in unexpected ways. Her wider curiosity is what brought van Herpen to observe the intrinsic symbiosis between fungi and her creations worn on the human body — itself filled with forms of digestive fungi.
For SS2021 she translated this in several ways, from embroidery on organza toiles that crawled over naked skin like intricate root channels or the endless wires that serve our hyperconnected world, or flowing silks that called to mind the underskirts of moist mushrooms in movement. Finding craftsmen with the kind of intricate detail and lightness of hand required for a single Iris Van Herpen creation is a challenge when her methods stand apart from traditional fashion design methods. This fact has led her to look elsewhere, sparking multiple collaborations with the Canadian speculative architect Philip Beesley, director of the Living Architecture Systems Group, who is often cited for his organic living art installations. “I think design is becoming more and more alive and it’s going towards a symbiosis with nature and our relationship on this planet”, explained van Herpen over Zoom from her atelier in Amsterdam days before the virtual show. “Philip is our longest collaborator, so it’s really interesting working with such a mix of different scientist. It’s just so special for us to have that access and that choice of knowledge to implement in our design process.”