Synopsis

In a stark white room that suggests both a hospital and a post-apocalyptic shelter, a young man and woman are driven by hunger, desire, and physical obsession. Their frantic encounters blur intimacy and violence as bodies, clothing, and flesh become unstable. The female performer appears in Iris van Herpen's sculptural designs, while the pair also wear stripped-down, bandage-like garments. As the film accelerates through feverish movement and unsettling tableaux, the lovers gradually waste away, ending as two skeletons locked in an embrace.

Factoids & Trivia

• Made in 2011, the film was created as an introduction to an Iris van Herpen runway presentation rather than as a conventional commercial for individual garments.

• Iris van Herpen's official video archive lists the project among her special projects as a collaboration with Zach Gold.

• The film treats flesh as its central visual subject, connecting carnality, decomposition, beauty, monstrosity, instinct, and desire.

• Its fashion imagery is intentionally subservient to the performers' extreme physical movement. The clothes are not presented through conventional catwalk poses or polished editorial tableaux.

• When the performers appear together, their pale, stripped-down outfits resemble medical bandages and reduce obvious gender distinctions. In the more isolated fashion passages, the female performer wears van Herpen's architectural silhouettes.

• The clinical white setting is not simply a fashion studio backdrop. Its combination of empty space, ash-like material, and frantic behavior gives the film a bleak, post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

• The film has been discussed in fashion-film scholarship as an example of a work that operates both independently and as a visual prelude to a runway show.

• Gold's Vimeo collection places "Zach Gold - Iris Van Herpen" alongside his other fashion films, including projects for Issey Miyake, Converse, and A.F. Vandevorst.