Birds and Faces Emerge From Dizzying Multi-Layered Gowns by Iris Van Herpen

Dutch fashion designer Iris Van Herpen blends cutting-edge technology and classic motifs in her thought-provoking garments. Van Herpen’s most recent collection, Shift Souls, was showcased at Paris Fashion Week, and featured dresses that play with structure and color to blur the boundaries between fashion, technology, and art.

In a statement on the brand’s website about the collection, Van Herpen explains that she was inspired by the fluidity of identity change in myths, particularly from Japan. The stories “gave me the inspiration to explore the deeper meaning of identity and how immaterial and mutable it can become within the current coalescence of our digital bodies.”

Many of the pieces in Shift Souls were created using laser cut fabric pieces to form abstracted birds and human faces, emphasizing the designer’s interest in the mutability of the human figure. Van Herpen also collaborated with artist Kim Keever to design fabric patterns based on his liquid color cloud photographs, as shown in the blue dresses below.

You can see more of the designer’s collections on Instagram, and watch a video of Shift Souls on the runway here. (via designboom)