Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses has arrived at the Brooklyn Museum for its final New York stop after touring Paris, Australia, Singapore, and Rotterdam. Curated by Matthew Yokobosky with Imani Williford, the retrospective brings together more than 100 pi
After years of turning fabric into something that looks almost animate. Iris van Herpen has finally brought her most unnerving materials to Brooklyn.. The Brooklyn Museum is hosting what may be the world’s most expensive sea creatures—though the show stops just short of actual life forms.. The retrospective, “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,” has officially reached its final stop in New York.
The exhibition has already traveled widely, visiting Paris, Australia, Singapore and Rotterdam before arriving in Brooklyn.. Museumgoers now step into the show’s central proposition: couture learns basic biology by way of spectacle. invention. and collaboration. rather than by abandoning the runway mindset.. “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” was curated by Matthew Yokobosky with the assistance of Imani Williford.
More than 100 pieces fill out the retrospective, tracing van Herpen’s background and the forces that shaped her approach.. She grew up in the small Dutch village of Wamel. and the show draws a line from years of ballet and a childhood close to nature to the designer who treats the human body like sculpture mid-metamorphosis.. The work is organized into nine sections. which map out a world where couture—usually wary of anything that isn’t purely human craft—has to negotiate with science. technology. and contemporary art.
Walking into the gallery, the first sights can feel like an interruption of reality.. There’s “the living dress. ” a collaboration with Chris Bellamy borrowed from the Sympoiesis collection. made from roughly 125 million bioluminescent algae—materials responsible for its radiating blue glow.. Elsewhere. Eileen Gu’s Met Gala look appears: a dress covered in thousands of crystalline glass spheres and equipped with actual bubble-generating technology.. That design was first introduced in 2016 and is now reworked with help from A.A.. Murakami.
The retrospective also reaches backward into van Herpen’s early experiments with architectural and scientific imagination.. A 2011 dress referencing Gothic cathedrals and alchemy is constructed from copper-electroplated 3D-printed polyamide, made with architect Isaïe Bloch.. The show even places the “skeleton dress. ” also from 2011. next to a fossil borrowed from the American Museum of Natural History—an arrangement that underscores how often van Herpen pairs fashion with biology. geology. and the visual language of research.
Van Herpen’s collaborators are not just name-checks; the exhibition repeatedly suggests they are co-authors of the effect.. In the show’s logic. the materials do the talking—bioluminescent algae. bubble technology. copper-electroplated 3D-printed polyamide—while the imagination keeps finding new angles to make the body feel like it’s changing in front of you.
The through-line is consistent across the exhibition: each standout piece is built by joining couture to a specific technical or scientific vocabulary—like bioluminescent algae for a blue glow. bubble-generating technology for Met Gala spectacle. and copper-electroplated 3D-printed polyamide for Gothic-alchemy references—so the nine sections collectively map how the designer’s background leads into ongoing collaborations with science and contemporary art.
“Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” is now in its final phase in New York. after the international run that took it through Paris. Australia. Singapore and Rotterdam.. For the Brooklyn Museum. the last stop comes with a kind of relief: the exhibition’s most unsettling proximity to life stays safely in the realm of art. even as it keeps asking visitors to look. and then look again. at what clothing can imitate.
Iris van Herpen Brooklyn Museum couture sculpture the senses fashion and technology bioluminescent algae bubble-generating technology 3D-printed polyamide Met Gala look Chris Bellamy Eileen Gu Isaïe Bloch American Museum of Natural History fossil
So it’s like sea creatures but not alive? Sounds kinda creepy.
I saw “100” and thought it was 100 outfits, not pieces. But 125 million algae?? Like are they gonna make it glow in the dark the whole time or what.
Honestly this feels like the museum trying to be TikTok science. “Sculpting the senses” sounds like perfume marketing. Also Brooklyn Museum always has some weird stuff, last time it was like robots or something.
Expensive sea creatures?? Wait did they actually bring real jellyfish or whatever and I missed it?? The article says it “stops just short of actual life forms” so I’m confused like… is it alive-ish or just made to look alive. Either way I don’t get why couture needs biology, like can’t it just be clothes.