The wild side of couture with Iris Van Herpen

PARIS - Paris walked the wilder side of haute couture on Monday night as Dutch designer Iris Van Herpen conjured strange, otherworldly creatures inspired by the teeming, invisible world of the microscopic.

Iris Van Herpen Haute Couture SS 2012 - Photo: Pixel Formula

Showing her second collection as guest member of the exclusive haute couture club, the 27-year-old adorned dresses with organic curves and curled tentacles, created from plexiglas, antique bronze, latex or lampshade fabric.

The designer, whose late-evening show in a Paris convent wrapped up the first of three days of couture collections, is known for her use of innovative, computerised design techniques alongside traditional hand-craftsmanship.

Her opening thigh-length dress, for instance, had rows of iridescent tentacles snaking down it, made from hundreds of tiny half moons of plexiglas, planned out on a computer, number-coded and hand-stitched onto the garment.

"It's like a big puzzle," said the designer backstage before the show.

Van Herpen -- whose fans include the singers Bjork and Lady Gaga -- aimed with her spring-summer collection to show the beauty of microscopic organisms, "a beauty that is half way between extraordinary and bizarre."

Models stepped out in "Fang" shoes with ten sharp teeth points to each foot -- wearing dresses that suggested even stranger animals.

Tiny mini-dresses had intricate motifs fanning out in spirals, made from countless strips of silver fabric -- originally lampshade material -- or three-dimensional panels made from minuscule plexiglas pins.

A silvery-black cape-dress, that sucked up light like oil, was made from silk layered under very fine plastic filaments, the design team explained backstage.

And a grey-green dress, with a cut-out at the back of its leather bodice, had a floor-length latex skirt whose bubbly texture suggested fine seaweed.

US rocker Beth Ditto, who sat front row, said she had received a baptism of fire.

"This is my first couture show, ever, and seriously I am moved," she told AFP afterwards. "I had chills the whole time. It's going to be really hard to blow my mind over and above this."

Van Herpen explained backstage that she saw experimenting with new materials and techniques as a vital part of her craft.

"My best things come out of experiments," she said. "Once I know what I'm doing, I lose my focus. I need the pressure that it might not work. With materials, once I know one, I move on to the next one."

She also explained that she tries to strike a balance between futurism, and a more earthy inspiration.

"I'm curious for the future, always looking for the unknown. But at the same time I'm not a computer girl at all," said the designer, who relies on associates for the computer modelling part of her work.

"I like to work with round shapes, a lot of my dresses are not symmetrical -- if you work too much with machines, it takes the life out of it."

by Emma Charlton