Inspired by fossils, water, skeletons, growth, and technology, Iris van Herpen has built a visual language that feels instantly recognizable on both the runway and the red carpet. Her otherworldly creations are now the focus of “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,” the traveling exhibition making its North American debut at the Brooklyn Museum on from May 16th through December 6th, after previous presentations in Paris, Brisbane, Singapore, and Rotterdam.
Raised in Wamel in the Netherlands, van Herpen grew up surrounded by nature and classical dance, two influences that continue to shape her work today. After training under Alexander McQueen, she opened her own studio in 2007 and, by the age of twenty-seven, became one of the youngest designers ever invited to join the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris. What continues to distinguish van Herpen from many of her contemporaries is her deeply collaborative practice, one that bridges fashion with architecture, biology, engineering, mathematics, and science. Her Amsterdam atelier functions less like a traditional couture house and more like a multidisciplinary laboratory where craftsmanship and innovation exist simultaneously.
Water, Air, and the Natural World
Installation Shot of “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,” May 16–December 6, 2026, Brooklyn Museum, New York. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum. Photo by On White Wall Studio.
“Sculpting the Senses” traces nearly two decades of the designer’s evolving vision, opening with the now-viral “dissolving” bubble dress worn by Eileen Gu at this year’s Met Gala. From the very beginning, the exhibition positions fashion as something fluid and alive, rooted in the natural world while pushing toward the futuristic.
Water becomes one of the exhibition’s most recurring motifs. Through blown glass, thermoformed Plexiglas, and suminagashi, the Japanese marbling technique, Van Herpen explores water not only as a physical substance but as movement, texture, and transformation itself. The garments seem suspended somewhere between liquid and structure, frozen in motion yet still deeply organic.
From there, the exhibition expands into forests, honeycombs, coral-like structures, and microscopic organisms. Prints by nineteenth-century biologist Ernst Haeckel appear throughout, reinforcing Van Herpen’s fascination with the unseen worlds hidden within nature. Moving between the microscopic and the cosmic, the exhibition reveals how consistently she transforms scientific observation into emotional and tactile forms.
Inside the Alchemical Atelier
Iris van Herpen. “Hydrozoa” Dress, from the “Sensory Seas” collection, 2020. PETG and glass organza. Collaborator: Shelee Carruthers. Model: Cynthia Arrebola. (Photo: David Ụzọchukwu)
The recreation of Van Herpen’s Amsterdam atelier offers a rare glimpse into the designer’s working process and the experimentation behind her couture. Titled the “Alchemical Atelier,” the installation reveals the research, testing, and material exploration that shape her collections.
Walls filled with fabric tests, molds, pleating studies, threading experiments, and miniature garment maquettes reveal the extensive material research behind each collection. The couturière calls this process a “craftolution,” where traditional couture techniques meet emerging technologies without sacrificing the intimacy of handcraft. Visitors can touch selected material samples and peer through microscopes into microscopic worlds that mirror the structures embedded within the garments themselves.
Fashion, Illusion, and the Human Body
Installation Shot of “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,” May 16–December 6, 2026, Brooklyn Museum, New York. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum. Photo by On White Wall Studio.
As “Sculpting the Senses” progresses, the atmosphere becomes increasingly psychological. Through hypnotic patterns, layered materials, and optical effects, Van Herpen’s garments begin exploring lucid dreaming, synesthesia, and altered states of perception. Light refracts across surfaces while silhouettes blur and destabilize, creating a sensory experience that feels intentionally disorienting.
The show then moves into more anatomical territory. Skeletons, circulatory systems, nerves, and exoskeleton-like structures emerge throughout the garments, recalling artists such as Michelangelo and Thomas Eakins, both of whom famously studied the body in obsessive detail. Fossils scattered throughout the galleries reinforce this fixation on what lies beneath the surface. One particularly striking installation places garments on either side of a sprawling fossil wall, creating an almost rib-like architectural formation.
(The influence of Hieronymus Bosch also becomes evident in the darker, more surreal sections of the exhibition.) Inspired by Bosch’s mystical worlds, as well as Metamorphoses, Japanese mythology, and Symbolist literature, Van Herpen explores transformation as something emotional, spiritual, and bodily all at once. Her garments exist in a liminal state, neither fully human nor entirely natural.
A Cabinet of Curiosities and Cosmic Futures
Installation Shot of “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,” May 16–December 6, 2026, Brooklyn Museum, New York. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum. Photo by On White Wall Studio.
Toward the end of the exhibition, visitors move through a dark Cabinet of Curiosities filled with couture garments, shoes, accessories, books, insects, butterflies, and scientific specimens. Illustrations by Ernst Haeckel and Émile-Allain Séguy converse with the garments, while runway videos animate the pieces in motion, allowing viewers to fully appreciate the movement of silk, organza, and sculptural textiles.
As the exhibit draws to a close, the “Cosmic Bloom” installation explodes, a monumental metallic circular structure surrounded by garments inspired by astronomical photography, seventeenth-century star maps, and imagery from the James Webb Space Telescope. Against the darkened gallery walls, mannequins appear to levitate while reflective surfaces cast shifting light across the intricate details of the garments. The effect feels entirely detached from Earth, transforming couture into something cosmic and almost spiritual.
Throughout the exhibition, immersive soundscapes and mirrored floor installations heighten the sensory experience, encouraging visitors to look more closely at the details and materiality of each piece. More than a retrospective, “Sculpting the Senses” becomes an exploration of Van Herpen’s evolving philosophy where fashion operates as a bridge between science, art, nature, technology, and the human body itself.
Installation Shot of “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,” May 16–December 6, 2026, Brooklyn Museum, New York. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum. Photo by On White Wall Studio.
