Iris van Herpen Creates Haute Couture Dress Made From Cocoa Beans In Innovative Collaboration With Magnum

This year marks the 15-year anniversary of the innovative house of Iris van Herpen and to celebrate the milestone, Iris van Herpen and Magnum collaborate to realise a vision of sustainability and circular fashion in Haute Couture.

Known as the first designer to send a 3D printed dress down the runway, van Herpen’s interest in the natural world around her drove her to use technology as a tool, combined with the craftsmanship inherent to Haute Couture to create intricate, organic dresses. 

Over the years, Iris van Herpen has developed a truly symbiotic relationship between fashion and technology through collaboration with people and industries outside fashion’s perimeters, from scientists to architects and now Magnum. 

You might not expect to hear Iris van Herpen in the same sentence as Magnum Ice Cream. However, the two have come together for an epic collaboration to create the world’s first vegan Haute Couture dress. 

The premium ice cream brand takes its first step into sustainable and circular fashion with Iris van Herpen, who designed and created The Magnum Vegan Dress, using material made from cocoa bean husks, a by-product of cocoa beans that usually goes to waste, processed to create a wholly organic biopolymer material. Could this have been done a few years prior? “Probably not.”, Iris tells GUAP, “It really required new 3D printers that print fully organic, which I don’t think was possible a few years ago.” 

Unveiled at Elysée Montmartre on July 4th, model Cindy Bruna debuted the stunning dress inspired by Magnum’s vegan ingredients. The dress features intricate details, including plantlike body embellishments, which are copper-coated, draped and entwined with upcycled and plissed organza. As well as 3-D elements printed using innovative SLS technology (Selective Laser Sintering). The dutch designer tells GUAP: “It has been such a process. We have been collaborating with people on sustainable materials and also materials made from banana leaf and cacao shell beans, so there are a lot of organic materials.” 

Iris van Herpen is one of the most innovative designers of our times, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible within fashion. As we reckon with an increasingly digital meta world, van Herpen continues to move with the times, inspired by what will come in the future. 

The 15th Anniversary AW22 collection, titled ‘Meta Morphism’, explores themes of transition, transformation and the lines between digital and reality, taking inspiration from “Metamorphoses”, a poem by the Roman poet Ovid, raising the timeless question of the various forms identity can take. 

View more images from Iris van Herpen’s AW22 Haute Couture Collection below:

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