Iris van Herpen’s New Retrospective Transcends Time, Space, and the Senses
The Brooklyn Museum show places over 140 of van Herpen’s designs in conversation with some very unexpected influences.
It’s pretty rare to enter a fashion exhibition and find references to single-celled plankton, connective tissue, and mycelial filaments. Indeed, stepping into Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses at the Brooklyn Museum, one might think they’d made a tremendously wrong turn and ended up at the American Museum of Natural History. But anyone familiar with van Herpen’s work knows not to expect a typical ready-to-wear retrospective. Over 20 years, the Netherlands native has transformed scientific concepts into showpieces worn by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Björk, Tilda Swinton, and many more stars. The exhibition—curated by Brooklyn Museum’s senior curator of fashion and material culture, Matthew Yokobosky, and curatorial assistant Imani Williford—places more than 140 haute couture creations in direct conversation with their sources of inspiration. Because this is Iris van Herpen we’re talking about, that includes a 180 million–year-old fossil (borrowed, in fact, from the Natural History Museum).
Sculpting the Senses is billed as a midcareer retrospective, a term that could feel like a death knell to many creatives. Van Herpen, on the contrary, takes the distinction in stride. “It’s fitting,” she tells W. To be fair, she got started early, opening her own studio when she was just 22, and at 41, she’s already been in the industry for almost two decades. Still, van Herpen has a highly prolific nature—one that is proudly on display at the museum.
The Seijaku dress in front of Contact, 2023 by Japanese art collection, 目.
The show opens with what van Herpen calls the Seijaku Dress, from her fall 2016 haute couture collection—though anyone who paid attention to the Met Gala earlier this month will immediately recognize it as the inspiration for Eileen Gu’s bubbled mini. At the Brooklyn Museum, the dress is placed before a mixed-media piece from the Japanese art collection 目 (mei, or “eye”), created specifically for the exhibition. Waves seem frozen in time, like they could overtake the gown at any moment. “I grew up between two rivers in the Netherlands, and my studio is next to the river as well,” van Herpen explains. “Water is the origin of life, and it’s the most vital material that we have on the planet.”
There’s a section dedicated to sea life, where dresses inspired by jellyfish and coral slither into view. Van Herpen’s techniques feature otherworldly effects that, in person, truly come alive. Those who have only seen the designer’s work from a screen are in for a treat.
Van Herpen’s ‘Hydrozoa Dress,’ 2020, from the “Sensory Seas” collection. On view at the Brooklyn Museum.
Sculpting the Senses expands across 15,000 square feet of gallery space. The show, which originated at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2023 and has since traveled worldwide, is organized by theme. The water and sea life sections give way to an exploration of form, where laser-cut dresses are placed next to mirroring artwork by van Herpen’s longtime collaborator, Rogan Brown.
Dresses in front of the 180 million–year-old Stenopterygius fossil.
Just when you’re officially and fully in awe of the designer’s hand, she lets you in on all the secrets. Suddenly, the small gallery rooms expand into an atrium, where a version of van Herpen’s atelier has been reconstructed. Thousands of fabric and material scraps line the walls, while real-time footage from her Dutch studio, projected in the center, clarifies why one of her dresses can take up to six months to create. Visitors are invited to touch samples and peer into microscopes for an even closer look at the process. This portion was van Herpen’s idea, and it was created specifically for the Brooklyn Museum’s stop on the show’s tour. “I love the architecture here,” van Herpen says of the Beaux Arts–style space. “The building makes everything breathe more.”
In one room, you’ll find skeletal designs matched with fossils. A 3-D-printed skeleton dress is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute for the Costume Art exhibition, but the Brooklyn Museum is the only place you can see it in conversation with a 180 million–year-old Stenopterygius.
For years, van Herpen eschewed color in her work, because she wanted the focus to remain on technique, artistry, and silhouette. In the penultimate gallery, “Cosmic Bloom,” dresses of every hue fall from the ceiling, where some mannequins have been installed upside-down. Meanwhile, a soundscape created by van Herpen’s partner, Dutch composer and music producer Salvador Breed, blasts through the speakers. (There’s also an auditory element to this show, which speaks to van Herpen’s synesthesia, highlighting pieces inspired by her ability to visualize sound.)
Dresses on display in the “Cosmic Bloom” gallery.
A respite from any overstimulation can be found in the familiar, like a dress once worn by Kylie Jenner for Interview Germany or a gown Gwendoline Christie donned for the season eight premiere of Game of Thrones in 2019. The Brooklyn Museum saved van Herpen’s many celebrity placements for the grand finale: the last gallery features a wall of some of the most influential women in culture over the past decade, all dressed in van Herpen. Rihanna, Natalie Portman, and more stand tall in their ethereal, sculptural designs. The journey has been completed from the microscopic organisms of the ocean to the macroscopic grandeur of space and the stars (both literally speaking and of the A-list variety).
Sculpting the Senses is on display at the Brooklyn Museum from May 16 to December 6, 2026.
