To know the work of designer Iris van Herpen is to know the great thing about a mushroom gill (her Spring 2021 assortment drew patterns from the mycelium community), the glow of bioluminescent algae (Fall 2025 included a “dwelling costume” made with 125 million Pyrocystis lunula organisms) and the motion of a fowl mid-flight (as seen within the glass wing pleats of her Fall 2018 assortment). Since founding her namesake model in 2007, the forward-thinking Dutch couturier has seemed to fields spanning arithmetic, neuroscience, marine biology, paleontology, mycology, mineralogy, astronomy, structure and dance to encourage her fantastical high fashion clothes.
These wide-ranging sources of inspiration are on the middle of Brooklyn Museum’s latest vogue exhibit, “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses.”
Photograph: Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum
“What I discovered wonderful about Iris was that she had a really totally different supply of inspiration than most designers,” Matthew Yokobosky, senior curator of vogue and materials tradition on the Brooklyn Museum (who has staged exhibitions on Dior, Virgil Abloh and Thierry Mugler), tells Fashionista. “After all, we’ve got designers who’re influenced by orchids or flowers… however Iris is taking a look at it past only a flower, only a leaf. She’s taking a look at constructions. She’s taking a look at development methods. She’s taking a look at how the world’s climate is altering, the ocean, the sky. It is a way more complicated field of inspiration.”
Having originated on the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2023, the “mid-career retrospective” brings collectively greater than 140 high fashion creations alongside up to date artwork items, design objects, scientific artifacts and pure historical past specimens. The present just isn’t chronological. As a substitute, it presents an immersive look into van Herpen’s thoughts during the last 19 years. “The exhibition appears like a diary,” van Herpen tells Fashionista. “Exhibits which were carried out, and processes, and collaborations.”
Photograph: Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum
The exhibit is organized into 11 thematic sections that mirror the breadth of van Herpen’s inspirations and dedication to environmental preservation. “Sensory Sea Life” dives beneath the ocean’s floor with otherworldly appears impressed by marine organisms, whereas “Cosmic Bloom” (above) appears outward to area and the multiverse past with attire which are displayed sideways and the other way up. A 2016 glass-sphere costume, set within the “Water and Goals” area (beneath), opens the present and brings to thoughts the sculptural mini Eileen Gu wore to the 2026 Met Gala, alongside liquid-like sculptural robes and air-like materials that evoke waves, waterfalls and drops. On the opposite finish, “New Nature” concludes the exhibit by imagining a post-human world with the potential for rebirth and transformation, with clothes together with a glance that Beyoncé wore on the Amsterdam cease of her 2023 “Renaissance” tour.
Photograph: Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum
Van Herpen is a grasp sculptor of silhouettes that seem to defy the legal guidelines of physics. That sense of impossibility is inseparable from her ardour for experimentation. In 2010, she pioneered using 3D printing in high fashion with the “Crystallization” assortment, setting the stage for the fusion of know-how and craftsmanship that has come to outline the model. Within the years since, she’s labored with modern processes together with laser reducing, magnetic sculpting and silicone molding and made progress in sustainable materials improvement (her most up-to-date assortment featured a fiber comprised of sugarcane) — all whereas preserving couture practices.
“There have all the time been these experimenters within the historical past of artwork and the historical past of vogue, and I liked that Iris has taken it to a different stage. She’s incorporating new applied sciences that have not been addressed earlier than,” Yokobosky says. “[But] Iris isn’t just know-how. She’s additionally these conventional handicrafts, and she or he’s discovering the place the place they arrive collectively. Iris is an artist who’s trying on the previous and the long run and discovering a solution to convey them collectively.”
That marriage of know-how and method comes into focus within the “Atelier,” which captures the essence of the model’s Amsterdam studio, the place every assortment begins with “hands-on materials experimentation.” The room highlights the work of van Herpen’s many collaborators (who’re credited all through the exhibition), like biodesigner Chris Bellamy and architect Philip Beesley, whereas providing a have a look at the making of the clothes by embroidery samples, laser-cut drawings, 3D-printing supplies, and a sketchbook guests can contact. “You are actually going inside my course of and my thoughts right here,” says van Herpen. “The spirit of my atelier is embodied on this area.”
Photograph: Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum
For a designer recognized for creating universes round runway exhibits, the exhibition equally builds a definite environment for each vignette. Movies, lighting, motion and a soundscape — the latter by composer, music producer and van Herpen’s companion, Salvador Breed — assist activate the galleries. The sound is very potent in “Skeletal Embodiment” (above), the place a visceral rattling sends a chill by the area as guests go clothes that mimic human stays and fossils. The eeriness bleeds into “The Mythology of Worry,” which incorporates the snake-covered costume (beneath) worn by Björk on tour in 2011.
Photograph: Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum
Van Herpen sees a connection between placing on vogue exhibits (which get a devoted video area within the exhibit) and an artwork retrospective. “I like doing the exhibits as a result of it carries a sure vitality. However what’s considerably irritating concerning the present is that we work for months and months on these items — typically a yr! — after which they’re gone in like 10 minutes,” she says. “[At an exhibition,] folks can come a lot nearer to the work. You’ll be able to have your individual private time with a bit. You may be there for an hour in order for you, and you may perceive the work so significantly better, and also you admire the craftsmanship that goes in there, and that’s simply not attainable to embody in a vogue present.”
Loads of vogue exhibitions have succeeded at showcasing stunning clothes. What makes “Sculpting the Senses” compelling is the best way it locations van Herpen’s avant-garde designs in cerebral dialog, not solely with up to date artwork, but in addition with artifacts and pure historical past specimens. Van Herpen’s color-forward robes (together with a pink costume seen on Anne Hathaway in “Mom Mary”) naturally come alive alongside the pigmented works of collaborator Kim Keever, in addition to items from artists like Nick Knight and James Turrell; however it’s typically the much less anticipated pairings that invite the deepest dialogue.
Photograph: Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum
An ornate nineteenth century maple-and-beech chair sharpens the attention to the small print of a wood-like costume from the 2012 assortment, impressed by Europe’s Gothic cathedrals (above). Early Twentieth-century renderings of marine life and mind perform from scientists Ernst Haeckel and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, respectively, reveal visible precedents for the patterns and constructions echoed within the clothes close by. An 80-million-year-old dinosaur cranium brings out the perimeters and coiled strains of the mollusc-inspired costume from van Herpen’s 2016 assortment.
Van Herpen sees these pairings as totally pure. “Artifacts within the exhibition communicate to our origins, who we’re, and I believe vogue in the end asks that query: Who’re we, and the place are we going?” Past providing followers a deeper understanding of her inventive course of, she hopes the exhibition turns into “a focal point for those that usually will not be into vogue.”
Photograph: Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum
“Every little thing that I do may be very intuitive. My thoughts combining all the disciplines into one, that is simply pure to me… however not everybody sees the connection,” she continues. “It made me understand how essential it’s to have these conversations to broaden the attitude on vogue. Individuals are likely to slim it right down to a really small remoted bubble, however it’s linked to all of those worlds.”
“Sculpting the Senses” refuses to deal with couture as an echo chamber. Van Herpen’s work might start with the spectacle and wonder, nevertheless it hardly ever stops there. It opens the door to exploration — to the ocean flooring, to bone constructions, to Greek myths, to microscopic organisms, to distant galaxies — and argues that couture may be greater than a show of aesthetics or method. It may be a manner of asking how people match into the bigger world round us.
“Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” is on view on the Brooklyn Museum from Might 16 by Dec. 6, 2026.
