Posthumanism as a concept shaping the fashion shows designed by Iris van Herpen? Considerations on the margins of the current discourse about fashion

Abstract

The fascination with new materials and innovative technology has placed the Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen on one of the leading positions among artists associated, in the theoretical discourse, with the tendency known as posthumanism. An analysis of the narratives present in the considerations of contemporary fashion critics leads to the conclusion that posthumanism is rarely defined unambiguously. Some perceive it as an idealized vision of a future free from binary classification of reality by means of dichotomous pairs: good / evil, nature / civilization, etc., while others ­associate this trend with the loss of identity developed by the biological species of homo sapiens and even see it as a dystopian end to humanity. The article attempts to present the relationship between the concept of posthumanism and the design creativity of Iris van Herpen, referring in particular to the collections prepared by her in cooperation with Neri Oxman and Philip Beesley. A comparison was also made of the posthumanist themes used by van Herpen with a similar concept present in the cyborg show prepared in 2018 by Alessandro Michelli, the artistic director of the Gucci fashion house.