Iris Van Herpen celebrates the brand’s fifteenth anniversary by showcasing the FW22 Couture Collection.

Fashion house IRIS VAN HERPEN presented their Autumn Winter 2022.23 Meta Morphism Haute Couture Collection, that celebrates the brand’s fifteenth anniversary, on the 4th July, during the ongoing Paris Fashion Week. The collection explores multiple realities, intangible identities, as well as the depths of the body in posthuman realities. 

The designer also reflects on Ovid’s magnus opus poem ‘Metamorphoses’, and with 16 looks examines the ancient visions of Ovid’s mythology through modern themes of transhumanism. The collection was built around three myths: The story of Arachne – a masterly weaver who challenges the goddess of Athena, and notorious for her craftsmanship – is transformed into a spider through shame, to hang from an eternal thread; the story of Daphne and Apollo – a tale of objectification, Daphne was the first love of the god Apollo, but met with unrequited affection, a parable of lust in the face of rejection; and the story of Narcissus – who falls in love with his own reflection, slowly languishing to death through self-obsession.

Arachne’s digital twin avatar is also spinning a multitude of spider silk threads around her. Her golden threads are snares that defy gravity and loat upwards into a cosmic web above her. Her spinning acts like a musical instrument and while she spins her golden silk instrument, she becomes the composer of her own body.