Iris van Herpen injects glass-covered gown with glowing plasma
Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen has unveiled her Helix Nebula dress during Paris Couture Week, featuring plasma-filled glass horns that light up in response to human touch.
Debuted as part of Van Herpen's haute couture show in Paris, Helix Nebula is billed as the world's first dress made with plasma – gas that is ionised so it carries an electrical charge.
Van Herpen worked with American artist Mundy Hepburn to inject this invisible material into hand-shaped glass horns.
When wearing the dress, the body conducts the plasma's electrical field, causing its charged particles to move and release photons at specific wavelengths.
As a result, the plasma lights up in a dramatic shade of red, with bolts of colour streaking through the glass horns as the wearer moves.
The process is similar to the one that powers neon lights, where the neon gas becomes glowing plasma when a voltage is applied.
On Earth, plasma is mostly visible in the form of lightning and the Northern Lights. But as the primary ingredient of stars, this fourth state of matter is actually estimated to make up around 99.9 per cent of the visible universe.
"For years, I have been drawn to the idea of creating a garment woven from energy alone," Van Herpen explained.
"We have shaped couture through solids, liquids, living matter and even gas," she added. "This is the first time we have worked with the fourth state of matter, plasma."
The rest of the gown is made from translucent tulle, clad with 8,000 hand-blown glass spheres that were bonded to the garment using UV light.
Arranged across the tulle in a delicate pattern, the spheres first featured in their thousands on the viral "iridescent bubble" dress that Van Herpen designed for Chinese-American athlete Eileen Gu to wear to this year's Met Gala.
Helix Nebula is one of 17 looks that form the designer's Sonic Starquakes collection, which was unveiled during the show.
Van Herpen said that the garments were created to reference "the unseen forces that shape our universe".
"The universal flow of energy shapes branching geometries across all scales, from the microscopic to the planetary, from lightning on Jupiter to river deltas on earth, and blood vessels and neural networks within our own bodies," said the designer.
Last year, Van Herpen spoke to Dezeen about her experiments with biomaterials including a "living" dress made from 125 million bioluminescent algae that emit light as it moves.
Paris Couture Week concludes today in the French capital.
The photography is courtesy of Iris van Herpen.
The post Iris van Herpen injects glass-covered gown with glowing plasma appeared first on Dezeen.
