Looking Outwards 09: on Looking Outwards

I chose to look at yoli’s Week 03 post about computational fabrication used in Iris Van Herpen’s fashion pieces. I love yoli’s commentary about the fashion industry, pointing out how fashion is always pushing the “cutting edge” while also repeating itself in many ways. I find this repetition as a mechanism for forward-thinking to be really profound and perfectly exemplified by Van Herpen’s work. While Van Herpen is pushing the field forward in her forms and novel fabrication methods, she also references traditional fashion with the soft sculpture elements and dress bases of her looks.

I find that not only are fashion professionals repeating themselves in their methods and designs, but repetition, as in Van Herpen’s work, has become a central principle to the designs themselves. For instance, in her “Sensory Seas” collection, she references human anatomy systems through repetition of physiological shapes.