To know the work of the designer Iris van Herpen to know the beauty of the mushroom gill (her Spring 2021 collection drew patterns in the network of mycelium), the light of bioluminescent algae (Fall 2025 includes a “living dress” made of 125 million.Pyrocystis lunulaliving things) and the movement of a bird in flight (as seen in the beguiling glass wing of his Fall 2018 collection). Since founding his namesake brand in 2007, the forward-thinking Dutch couturier has looked to fields including mathematics, neuroscience, marine biology, paleontology, mycology, mineralogy, astronomy, architecture and dance to inspire his stunning haute couture clothes.
Those broad sources of inspiration are at the center of the Brooklyn Museum’s new fashion exhibit, “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses.”
Image: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
“What I found amazing about Iris was that she had a very different source of inspiration than most designers,” Matthew Yokobosky, senior curator of fashion and material culture at the Brooklyn Museum (who has done shows for Dior, Virgil Abloh and Thierry Mugler), told Ujo Shop. “Yes, we have designers who are inspired by orchids or flowers… but Iris looks beyond just a flower, just a leaf. She looks at architecture. She looks at growth plans. She looks at how the world’s climate changes, the sea, the sky. It’s a very complex inspiration box.”
Launched at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2023, the “mid-career retrospective” brings together more than 140 haute couture creations alongside contemporary art pieces, design objects, scientific artifacts and natural history specimens. The game is inconsistent. Instead, it offers a focused look into van Herpen’s mind over the past 19 years. “The show feels like a diary,” van Herpen told Ujo Shop. “Exhibits made, and procedures, and collaborations.”
Image: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
The exhibition is organized into 11 themed sections that reflect the range of van Herpen’s inspirations and commitment to conservation. “Sensory Sea Life” dives under the sea with marine life, while “Cosmic Bloom” (above) looks out into space and diversity beyond the side and bottom exposed garments. The 2016 glass-sphere dress, placed in the “Waters and Dreams” space (below), opens the show and reminds us of the mini sculptural Eileen Gu wearing at the 2026 Met Gala, alongside liquid-like sculptural dresses and wind-like fabrics that evoke waves, waterfalls and drops. On the other hand, “New Nature” ends the show by envisioning a post-human world with the possibility of rebirth and transformation, with clothes that include the look that Beyoncé wore on the Amsterdam stop of her 2023 “Renaissance” tour.
Image: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
Van Herpen is a professional painter of images that seem to defy the laws of physics. That sense of impossibility is inseparable from his love of experimentation. In 2010, he pioneered the use of 3D printing in haute couture with the “Crystallization” collection, setting the stage for the fusion of technology and art that would define the product. In the years since then, he has worked with new processes including laser cutting, magnetic sculpting and silicone molding and made progress in the development of sustainable materials (his latest collection featured fiber made from sugar cane) – all while maintaining couture traditions.
“There have always been those who experimented in art history and fashion history, and I loved that Iris has taken it to the next level. She’s incorporating new technologies that haven’t been explored before,” Yokobosky said. “[But] Iris is not just technology. He is also one of those traditional crafts, and he finds a place where they meet. Iris is an artist who looks at the past and the future and finds a way to bring them together.”
That marriage of technology and technique is the focus of “Atelier,” which captures the essence of the brand’s Amsterdam studio, where each collection begins with a “physical exploration.” The room highlights the work of many of van Herpen’s collaborators (honored throughout the exhibition), such as organic designer Chris Bellamy and architect Philip Beesley, while offering a look at the making of clothes through embroidered samples, laser drawings, 3D printing materials, and a sketchbook that visitors can touch. “You get inside my process and my mind here,” said van Herpen. “The spirit of my atelier is embodied in this space.”
Image: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
For a designer known for creating universes around runway shows, the show similarly creates a unique atmosphere for every vignette. Videos, lighting, movement and soundscape – the latest by composer, music producer and van Herpen’s partner, Salvador Breed – help launch the galleries. The sound is especially powerful in “Skeletal Embodiment” (above), where a visceral rattling sends chills through the space as visitors pass costumes that mimic human remains and fossils. Fear comes from “The Mythology of Fear,” which includes a snake-covered dress (below) worn by Björk on tour in 2011.
Image: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
Van Herpen sees a connection between wearing fashion shows (which gets a dedicated video space at the show) and art retrospectives. “I love doing shows because they have a certain energy. But what worries me about the show is that we work for months and months on these pieces – sometimes a year! – and they’re like 10 minutes long,” he says. “[At an exhibition,] people can get closer to work. You can have your own time with an episode. You can be there for an hour if you want, and you can understand the work better, and you appreciate the art that goes into it, and that’s not possible to put together a fashion show.”
A number of fashion shows have succeeded in showcasing beautiful clothes. What makes “Carving the Senses” compelling is the way it places van Herpen’s avant-garde designs in a brainstorming session, not only with contemporary art, but also with artifacts and examples of natural history. Van Herpen’s color-forward dresses (including the red dress seen in Anne Hathaway’s “Mother Mary”) naturally live alongside the colorful works of collaborator Kim Keever, and pieces by artists like Nick Knight and James Turrell; but often an unexpected pairing that invites deep dialogue.
Image: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
An ornate 19th-century maple-and-beech chair sharpens the eye to wood-like fabric details from the 2012 collection, inspired by Europe’s Gothic cathedrals (above). Early 20th-century interpretations of marine life and brain function from scientists Ernst Haeckel and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, respectively, provide visual examples of patterns and structures echoed in nearby clothing. An 80-million-year-old dinosaur skull reveals the fringes and folded lines of a mollusc-inspired dress in van Herpen’s 2016 collection.
Van Herpen sees this pairing as completely natural. “The artefacts in the exhibition talk about our origins, who we are, and I think fashion ultimately asks that question: Who are we, and where are we going?” Besides giving fans a deeper insight into his artistic process, he hopes the show will be “a point of interest for people who don’t usually like fashion.”
Image: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
“Everything I do is very intuitive. My mind combines all the fields into one, that’s natural for me … but not everyone sees the connection,” he continues. “It made me realize how important it is to have these conversations to broaden the perspective on fashion.
“Painting the Senses” refuses to treat couture as an echo chamber. Van Herpen’s work may begin with spectacle and beauty, but it rarely stops there. It opens the door to exploration – on the bottom of the sea, in skeletal structures, in Greek mythology, in microscopic organisms, in distant galaxies – and argues that couture can be more than a display of beauty or technique. It can be a way of asking how people fit into the great world around us.
“Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum from May 16 to Dec. 6, 2026.