Unquiet
Things

I have a category on my blog here called “not a fashion blog” because it’s not! I write about all kinds of things. But I also have an interest in FASHUN that cannot be denied when the runway becomes a portal to something so otherworldly and strange.

Iris Van Herpen’s Fall 2025 couture collection was precisely this kind of oceanic witchcraft—dresses that breathed and pulsed with 125 million bioluminescent algae, gossamer gowns that floated through the air like alien cnidarians pulsing through ethereal extraterrestrial tides, and sculptural forms that twisted skyward like alien hydrothermal vents frozen mid-eruption. Van Herpen has conjured living garments that glow cyan in the dark and require daily care like houseplants, fashion as symbiotic organism where couture meets marine biology in a very extra off-world-abyssal-rave-from-another-dimension way. These dresses belonged in glass cases at some future museum of extinct oceanic wonders that never were.

There were also moments of faceted filigree Art Nouveau chrysalis work, as well as couture versions of those dramatic birds that resemble rich Victorian widows whose last four husbands died under mysterious circumstances.

The whole spectacle was accompanied by a bespoke Francis Kurkdjian fragrance, an olfactory score, that wafted through the venue like invisible oceanic waves, while models walked in heel-less shoes surrounded by cascading metal halos that echoed the structure of sonar waves. It was quite the fantastical metamorphic menagerie!

Read more about Iris van Herpen’s Sympoiesis at Paris Haute Couture Week here.

(Thank you, D., for bringing this to my attention!)

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