Fashion designer Iris van Herpen has teamed up with premium ice cream brand Magnum to design a haute couture dress inspired by its vegan ice cream.
Designed and created using 3D printing, the dress was unveiled during Paris Fashion Week on Monday in a bid to showcase the “decadence of plant-based deliciousness” in tandem with circular fashion.
The design is a celebration of Magnum’s vegan range that incorporates sustainable materials and is reportedly the first haute couture dress to be made from cocoa bean husks.
Pioneering 3D printing in fashion
Van Herpen has been at the forefront of combining 3D printing and digital manufacturing techniques with haute couture fashion design for over a decade. The designer has an extensive body of work that integrates 3D printing and other technologies, beginning with her “Crystallization” 3D printed top back in 2010.
Since then, van Herpen has created 3D printed fashion pieces for famous celebrities like Bjork, Beyonce, and Lady Gaga, and has also worked with the likes of Stratasys and Materialise to bring her designs to fruition.
One 3D printing technology at the heart of a number of van Herpen’s designs is a “Foliage” fabrication technique developed in partnership with TU Delft, and in 2019 the two debuted their 3D printed “Cellchemy” face jewelry at the Musee des Beaux-Arts.
Over the years, her 3D printed designs have made their way onto the Paris Fashion Week runway, ranging from a gown sown in real-time onto Game of Thrones actress Gwendoline Christie to a “Magnetic Motion” collection inspired by the Large Hadron Collider. The Met Gala has also displayed several of van Herpen’s designs, including a striking custom-designed gown for Canadian musician Grimes and four fashion pieces featuring 3D printed elements for Dove Cameron, Teyana Taylor, Winnie Harlow, and Fredrik Robertsson.
Fusing cocoa and haute couture
Hailed as a “first of its kind”, the Magnum Vegan Haute Couture Dress has been designed and created using an intricate 3D design and SLS additive manufacturing technology. The dress incorporates sustainable materials designed to echo the vegan ingredients within Magnum’s ice cream, including cocoa bean husks that have been processed to create a fully organic and 3D printable biopolymer material.
The dress features intricate details such as plant-like copper-plated body embellishments coated and entwined with upcycled organza, alongside other 3D printed elements.
“I am honored to have been approached by Magnum ice cream as a partner to bring to life the Magnum Vegan Dress,” said van Herpen. “As a designer, I have always worked to push the boundaries of design and this collaboration has really allowed us to take this one step further by linking the ingredients of an iconic Magnum Vegan to create a haute couture design.
“The opportunity to work with the brand on such an innovation in sustainable fashion has been a very special experience.”
The Magnum Vegan Dress is part of van Herpen’s 15th anniversary collection titled “Meta Morphism”, which aims to explore society’s embrace and acceptance of a “new world of digitalism” with the arrival of the Metaverse.
From Magnum’s perspective, the partnership with van Herpen marks the brand’s first step towards a wider ambition of circularity in the fashion sector, while also underlining its long-term commitment to improving sustainability within the industry. Billed as a “dynamic collision between ice cream and haute couture”, the project aimed to support both the brand and van Herpen’s desire to create a fully sustainable production chain within the fashion industry.
“What an honor to be able to reveal the Magnum Vegan Dress to the world – and to be able to do this at Iris’ 15th anniversary show just makes this even more special,” said Cindy Bruna, who modeled the dress during Paris Fashion Week.
“Bringing together ice cream and haute couture in such an unexpected and impactful way is so exciting, making this a partnership that I am delighted to be a part of.”
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Featured image shows Magnum ice cream, iconic fashion designer Iris Van Herpen and model Cindy Bruna debut first-ever haute couture vegan dress to the world at Paris Fashion Week. Photo via Magnum.
