Iris van Herpen at the Brooklyn Museum: Couture as Science

Iris van Herpen makes dresses that look like water, bone, coral and smoke. The Brooklyn Museum's Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses, which opened on May 16 and runs through Dec. 6, is her first major New York exhibition and the North American debut of a show that has already been to Paris, Brisbane, Singapore and Rotterdam. It has 140 haute couture works, and it asks a question that couture rarely faces in public: what does a dress owe to the natural world it imitates?

Timed tickets are required, and the show is free and untimed for museum members, according to the museum's listing.

From Paris to Brooklyn

The exhibition debuted in 2023 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. It then traveled to the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, to the ArtScience Museum in Singapore and to the Kunsthal Rotterdam. The Paris curators, Cloé Pitiot and Louise Curtis, organized it. The Brooklyn presentation was organized by Matthew Yokobosky, the museum's senior curator of fashion and material culture, with Imani Williford.

The museum timed the opening to its annual Brooklyn Artists Ball, where Van Herpen was honored. Two days earlier, on May 14, she appeared in conversation with Vanessa Friedman, the New York Times fashion director and chief fashion critic, in the museum's auditorium.

What is in the galleries

The show places more than 140 Van Herpen designs in dialogue with contemporary art, design and scientific artifacts. The museum says its themes include the mystery and might of water, the architecture of the skeleton and anatomical systems, the physics of motion, the perception of sound and light, and the generative interconnectedness of nature. One section evokes the designer's atelier, so visitors can see the handwork and the tactile nature of couture.

The contemporary artists named by the museum include Agostino Arrivabene, Philip Beesley, Lanny Bergner, Rogan Brown, the Japanese art collective Mé, Casey Curran, Wim Delvoye, Kim Keever, Nick Knight, Jacques Rougerie, David Spriggs and Tim Walker. Design pieces by Ferruccio Laviani, Tomáš Libertíny and Ren Ri sit alongside loans of scientific artifacts and natural history specimens, such as coral, fossils and skeletons. A soundscape by the Dutch composer and music producer Salvador Breed runs through the galleries.

That mix is deliberate, and it is rooted in the museum's history. The Brooklyn Museum began in 1890 as the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, which held both fine art and scientific collections. The museum says the interdisciplinary approach nods to those origins. Brooklyn also adds new works from its own collections in American art, Asian art, contemporary art and feminist art, as well as materials from its libraries and archives. Featured artists in that group include Katsumata Chieko, Tara Donovan, Harold Edgerton, Senju Hiroshi, Fujikasa Satoko and Rob Wynne.

The designer

Van Herpen was born in 1984 and grew up in the Dutch riverside village of Wamel. The museum says her closeness to nature and her passion for classical dance both shaped her approach. She founded the Maison Iris van Herpen in Amsterdam in 2007. She became the first designer to show a 3D-printed dress on the runway, with her 2010 Crystallization collection.

Her work has been worn by Beyoncé, Björk, Jordan Roth, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Naomi Campbell, Rosalía, Sarah Jessica Parker and Zoë Kravitz, the museum lists. The press release says she draws on mathematics, neuroscience, marine biology, paleontology, mycology, mineralogy and astronomy. It credits her designs with evoking the unseen structures of nature, from coral reefs and the branching systems of fungi to the patterns of planetary motion.

Yokobosky said her work transforms fashion into living art. Van Herpen said New York's energy, creativity and openness to new ideas have long inspired her, and that Brooklyn, with its community of artists and innovators, felt like the right place to share the show.

A museum with a fashion habit

The Brooklyn Museum has staged fashion exhibitions since its 1934 show The Story of Silk. The press release lists a run of designers honored since then: Dorothy Wright Liebes in 1942, Madame Grès in 1982, Elsa Schiaparelli in 1994, Jean Paul Gaultier in 2013, Pierre Cardin in 2019, Christian Dior in 2021, and Virgil Abloh and Thierry Mugler in 2022. The Van Herpen show extends that line, and it fits the museum's stated commitment to pioneering women in art and design, including its Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

The show is supported by the Simons Foundation as part of its Infinite Sums initiative, and the museum credits a long list of co-chairs and donors. Those names are listed in its release, and they underline how large a project this is.

How it sits next to the Met

Visitors in the city this fall can see two big fashion arguments within a subway ride of each other. The Met's Costume Art, which runs through Jan. 10, 2027, asks how artists have depicted the dressed body. The Brooklyn show asks how one designer has turned science into the dressed body. One looks backward through a collection. The other follows a single practice forward.

A visitor interested in technique should look for the atelier section. The museum describes it as a chance to engage firsthand with the handcraftsmanship and tactile nature of couture. The same press release credits Van Herpen with the first 3D-printed dress on a runway. Couture here is not presented as a lost craft or as a technology demo. It is both, in the same designer's practice.

FAQ

When is Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses on view?

May 16, 2026 through Dec. 6, 2026, at the Brooklyn Museum.

How many works are in the show?

More than 140 haute couture designs, shown with contemporary art, design and scientific specimens.

Is this a New York debut?

Yes. It is Van Herpen's first major New York exhibition and the show's North American debut.

Do I need a timed ticket?

Yes, timed tickets are required, except for museum members, who enter free and untimed.

Sources

*Cover photo: Jos Groningen, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iris_Van_Herpen.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iris_Van_Herpen.jpg)* (CC BY 2.0).*