11 | November | 2022

By: Emilia Moberg

Iris Van Herpen is a Dutch designer, born in 1984, in the small town of Wamel, Netherlands. In her youth, she enjoyed painting and dance before being introduced to fashion as an art form in high school. During those formative years, Van Herpen learned the building blocks of fashion design, which inspired her to pursue an education at the Artez Institute of the Arts Arnhem. Her influences include Alexander McQueen and Claudy Jongstra, whom she interned for before starting her own brand in 2007.

Since then, Van Herpen’s style has been defined by a futuristic, fantastical, sci-fi use of non-conventional materials, including 3-D printed garments. She has collaborated with a variety of other designers, artists and choreographers whom have further inspired her unique sensibility. Her work has been featured in the MET in New York City and the Royal Museum in Toronto, and has received various other accolades.

One of the notable collections out of her repertoire is her debut couture collection, Capriole. It was presented during Paris Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2011. The show contains highlights from previous collections, but the heart of the show revolves around 5 new designs. These designs are intended to convey the feeling one experiences “Just before and during a free-fall parachute jump”.

The first of these designs is a tangled knot of black plastic tentacles formed into a the shape of a mini dress. According to Van Herpen, the piece is a representation of one’s state of mind before skydiving. The three dresses to follow utilize geometric shards of black and translucent plastic material, which sculpt and expand from the models body. The collection’s final dress, called “The Skeleton Dress”, was created through 3-D printing technology. The dress loosely follows the structure of a human skeleton, with abstract ribs, spine and hip bones. Van Herpen likens the garment to the feeling of being “turned inside out” while falling through the air.

“The Skeleton Dress” – Image taken from: https://www.eragatory.com/Capriole-Skeleton-dress

“The first of these designs is a tangled knot of black plastic tentacles formed into a the shape of a mini dress.” – Image taken from:
https://www.irisvanherpen.com/collections/capriole/runway-17

By: Domingo Basso

Image taken from: https://www.google.com/url?
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electrikjam.com%2Ftypes-of-guitars-
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=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAoQjhxqFwoTCJiyi-zNn_sCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAZ

Okay, so you might be planning to buy a guitar at some point in the future but you have no idea what to buy because of the sheer variety of them. Well, hopefully after reading this you’ll at least have a little bit of a better Idea of what you might buy.

First things first, we gotta start from the beginning, that being: what type of guitar you even want. Whether that is an acoustic, electric, bass, there’s a bit to unpack here. So, let’s go over what each of these different types of guitars even are and what separates them from each other.

The main types of guitar are: Classical guitar, Acoustic guitar, Electric guitar, and Bass guitar.

A quick disclaimer beforehand: all of these instruments can be modified and can vastly vary in sound and shape due to the sheer variety of them, but I’ll tell you what each instrument ‘typically’ is like.

The Acoustic guitar is a guitar that typically has 6 metal strings. It is known for being unlike most other guitars in the sense that it requires no electricity or power of any sort to play properly. This also makes it one of the cheapest and least maintenance options for a guitar due to you not needing to worry about as many parts to keep the guitar functioning properly.

The Classical guitar is very similar to the acoustic guitar in many ways including the fact that it too requires no external power in order to operate properly. But, what separates this from the acoustic guitar is the fact that the strings are generally made of nylon (a type of plastic) giving it its own unique sound from the acoustic.

Right from the get go, you’ll probably be able to tell that the bass guitar is the oddest out of the bunch, even from just its appearance alone. Bass guitars typically have only 4 thick strings and are noticeably lengthier than other guitars. But, what truly differentiates them from the other guitars is the type of sound that they produce and how you typically play them. Bass guitars are known for having a lower end sound like a WAY lower pitched sound, hence why the strings are so much thicker than those of other guitars. You also play bass guitars a little differently from other guitars in the sense that you usually play individual notes rather than multiple at once. This allows the bass to be a pretty solid instrument to start off with from a difficulty standpoint, but trust me when I say that mastering this instrument will still be just as challenging as the others.

Finally, the electric guitar. The electric guitar is the guitar with the most reputation and it deserves most of the credit that it gets. The electric guitar is one of the most versatile instruments on the planet due to the fact that it is built similarly to the acoustic but because of its electronic properties, it can create a much more assertive sound. It also has the ability to play mellower sounds giving it a very dynamic range. The only drawback really, for this instrument, is the monetary cost of maintaining it and purchasing the necessary parts.

I hope that my insight on each of these instruments will help you at least a little bit in deciding what to buy (and as a bass player I’m not telling you to buy the bass guitar buuuut I totally am telling you to do that so go buy a bass ASAP).

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