![\"Image](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2223304769.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nAlthough the Brooklyn Museum transferred its costume holdings to the Costume Institute in 2009, BAM has presented one blockbuster exhibition after another, many monographs (Virgil Abloh, Thierry Mugler, Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin, Jean Paul Gaultier), and some on broad themes: \u201cSolid Gold,\u201d \u201cAfrica Fashion,\u201d \u201cStudio 54: Night Magic.\u201d How does Yokobosky see \u201cSculpting the Senses,\u201d fitting in\u2014and standing out\u2014from this schema?<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Dior, I incorporated over 20 significant works from the museum\u2019s permanent collection, offering conversations between Christian Dior\u2019s interests, his successors, and artists whose work engaged similarly,\u201d the curator explained. \u201cFor example, in the mid-1950s, Christian Dior spoke about how every season he is offered a panoply of beautiful fabrics in many colors, but at the end of the day he would be happy to just work in black\u2026which to me, spoke to the works of artists like Louise Nevelson and Ad Reinhardt, who made similar convictions about the color black. That was a major highlight for me, visually bringing those dresses and artworks in conversation.\u201d He continued: \u201cFor Iris van Herpen, her mood boards aren\u2019t filled with fashions and photographs of past decades, but with images of the aquatic universe, drawings of the nervous system, and millions of years old paleontology specimens. Her references are unlike those of other designers of dresses and gowns, and so her creations have both an other-worldly and \u2018new\u2019 aspect. And so for this exhibition, \u2018Sculpting the Senses,\u2019 we are including objects such as coral and a work by Collectif Me, that appears as if a \u2018slice of ocean\u2019 was brought into the gallery.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Van Herpen exhibition is not a retrospective in the same way that, say, Mugler\u2019s was because she is alive, her career is still very much a work in progress, and, as Yokobosky notes, \u201cVan Herpen\u2019s work feels profoundly of the present.\u201d As a result, what visitors will come away with is less a contextualization of fashion work in the past than a developing story, which is likely to affect how people experience the exhibition. Rather than projecting possible takeaways from the show, the curator said, \u201cI like them to feel immersed in the subject, in the experience\u2014which includes visual candy as well as intriguing written information. Sometimes sound, and more. Each person can tune into what they find interesting and walk away with a different feeling and different knowledge, and more\u2014through their own associations. So I don\u2019t think there\u2019s one outcome, but many permutations.\u201d This is a curatorial approach that syncs with how people are thinking more broadly about style today.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Iris van Herpen, fall 2025 couture<\/p>\n
Photo: Thomas Samson \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although the Brooklyn Museum transferred its costume holdings to the Costume Institute in 2009, BAM has presented one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,3427,26867,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-246873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-exhibitions","15":"tag-iris-van-herpen","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}