WILDERNESS EMBODIED - The Wilderness Embodied collection explores the beauty and complexity of the natural forces that shape nature and the intimate traditions of the be-wilderness of the human body through piercing, scarification or surgery.  The hybrid humanoid figures and the wild organic forms derived from the regenerative processes of nature created by Canadian artist David Altmejd, were an important inspiration for Van Herpen. Altmejd's influence can be perceived in the way growth movements reclaim their place in the design process.
Dutch artist Jólan van der Wiel, who specializes in magnetism as a design process, collaborated with van Herpen on several dresses that were created by the natural phenomenon of attraction and repulsion. Inviting nature and chaos into the design process, the 'Moon Dress' was coated with a liquid iron resin whose surface was then pulled by using large magnets to 'grow' the three dimensional textures of the dress, resembling a crater-covered moon.
Another dress, the' Battling Bird dress' was made of  thousands of laser-cut nude 'dragon-skin' feathers, creating a hybrid of a human skin and birds feathers. With architect Isaie Bloch and Materialise Van Herpen continues to develop 3D-printed dresses, and with United Nude and Stratasys she developed 3D printed shoes that tangle around the foot
like webs of tree-roots.

Materials: laser-cut Japanese changeant fabric, silicone, gull skulls, pearls, silicone feathers, iron filings, PU resin, changeant acetate, stainless steel piercings, viscose, cotton