![\"Iris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/DIG_E_2026_Iris_Van_Herpen_Sculpting_the_Senses_On_White_Wall_004-scaled.jpg\")
Installation view of \u201cIris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,\u201d Brooklyn Museum, 2026. Photography by On White Wall. All images courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.<\/p>\nInstallation view of \u201cIris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,\u201d Brooklyn Museum, 2026. Photography by On White Wall. All images courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.<\/p>\n
Iris van Herpen\u2019s mid-career retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum begins, as all things did, with water.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe come from the sea,\u201d says the couturier. \u201cThat\u2019s why I wanted to start with water, the origin of life.\u201d The first looks of \u201cIris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses\u201d<\/a>\u2014a mini dress made of delicate glass bubbles caught perpetually mid-twirl, worn by Olympic skier Eileen Gu at this year\u2019s Met Gala<\/a>, and a garment cascading up and out like a placid lake caught mid-splash\u2014set the tone for an exhibition driven by biomorphic structures and sensations. One dress was modeled on the chronophotographic lines created by birds\u2019 wing movement. Another on an insect\u2019s exoskeleton. Van Herpen, who first inked headlines for her use of then-novel 3D printing technologies nearly two decades ago, executes her garments with a scientist\u2019s precision and toolkit. The exhibition\u2019s labels catalog a laboratory\u2019s worth of gizmos: theraformed PETG waves, geodesic domes, and laser-cut fabric dendrites, to name a few.<\/p>\n \u201cSculpting the Senses,\u201d initially mounted at the Mus\u00e9e des Arts D\u00e9coratifs in Paris in 2023, is the designer\u2019s first major museum presentation Stateside. It offers over 140 haute couture looks alongside artworks, design objects, fossils, videos, and natural specimens. The designer has dressed everyone from Beyonc\u00e9 to Cate Blanchett, but few celebrity faces appear in the show. Instead, the exhibition\u2019s 11 themed rooms tackle van Herpen\u2019s chief interests: skeletal structures, primordial fear, and the movements of the cosmos.<\/p>\n Material exploration is at the heart of the show, and it\u2019s on full display with its centerpiece, the Atelier. The fourth of the themed rooms teems with swatches, prototypes, silicone latticework, mycelium lace, and 3D-printed polyamide on dress forms, across the walls, and even underneath microscope slides that guests are invited to peer through. \u201cMy work is about so many different techniques\u2014contemporary ones, but also historic ones\u2014and they\u2019re equally beautiful and important,\u201d says van Herpen. She\u2019s partial to collaboration with architects, scientists, dancers, and artists. One garment, a gown made from 125 million bioluminescent algae, took three months to construct with the help of a team from the University of Amsterdam and biodesigner Christopher Bellamy (in the show, it lives behind glass and is periodically misted to stay fresh).<\/p>\n Her latest fascination is 4D printing, an experimental technology that\u2019s just as futuristic as it sounds. \u201cIt means that a material has a memory, and you can code the memory so it can change shape over time,\u201d says van Herpen. For now, it\u2019s purely theoretical, but that\u2019s never stopped her before.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n More of our favorite stories from CULTURED<\/p>\n Danielle Mckinney Shares the Advice That Keeps Her Painting Even on Her Worst Days<\/a><\/p>\n What Not Having Mental Imagery Implies for Psychoanalysis, Trauma, and Our Sense of Self<\/a><\/p>\n Meet the Woman Who Curated the Art on Miranda Priestly\u2019s Walls<\/a><\/p>\n Mina Stone\u2019s Guide to Eating, Buying, and Cooking With Chocolate (More) Safely<\/a><\/p>\n Can Raising Children Make You a Better Artist? Four Artist Mothers Weigh In.<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Iris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/DIG_E_2026_Iris_Van_Herpen_Sculpting_the_Senses_On_White_Wall_003-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Iris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/DIG_E_2026_Iris_Van_Herpen_Sculpting_the_Senses_On_White_Wall_010-scaled.jpg\")
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