There are exhibitions that you admire, exhibitions that educate, and then there are exhibitions that leave you speechless. Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses at the Brooklyn Museum belongs firmly in that last category.
We have seen many fashion exhibitions, but walking through this extraordinary presentation of Iris van Herpen’s work was something entirely different. The creativity, imagination, and sheer intricacy of the designs are difficult to describe until you stand in front of them yourself.
And that is perhaps the most important thing to say about this exhibition: photographs simply do not do it justice.
When Fashion Becomes Sculpture
Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses brings together more than 140 haute couture creations with contemporary art, design and scientific objects. Rather than presenting fashion simply as clothing, the exhibition invites us to look at the human body, nature, science and technology in completely new ways.
Van Herpen’s creations can appear to be simultaneously fashion, sculpture and something from another world. Some are inspired by ocean creatures; others recall insects, flowers, mushrooms, skeletal structures or distant planets. Shapes seem to move, expand, float and transform around the body.
Seeing the pieces in person makes their extraordinary construction even more apparent. Tiny details, unexpected textures, layers and complex structures reveal themselves as you move around each garment. What might look relatively simple in a photograph can become astonishingly intricate when viewed from every angle.
A Journey from Water to Outer Space
The exhibition is organized as a constellation of themes that explores the sources of Van Herpen’s imagination.
“Water and Dreams” begins the journey with designs inspired by the elusive and constantly changing qualities of water. From there, “Sensory Sea Life” and “Cosmic Bloom” take visitors from the microscopic world beneath the ocean to the enormous scale of outer space.
Other sections explore the hidden structures of insects and mushrooms, the physical and psychological architecture of the body, and possible future forms of human existence. “Forces Behind the Forms,” “Growth Systems,” “The Mythology of Fear,” “Skeletal Embodiment,” “Synesthesia,” “New Nature,” “Alchemical Atelier” and “Cabinet of Curiosities” each reveal another aspect of Van Herpen’s extraordinarily multidisciplinary imagination.
Where Art and Science Meet
One of the most fascinating aspects of the exhibition is the dialogue between fashion, art and science.
Van Herpen has long been known for embracing technology while maintaining the handcraft and precision associated with haute couture. Her work incorporates innovative materials, experimental techniques and, famously, early applications of 3D printing in fashion.
The result is not a traditional fashion exhibition. Instead, it feels like entering an alternative universe where biology, technology, sculpture and couture exist together.
The Details Are Everything
What stayed with us most was the incredible attention to detail.
Van Herpen’s garments can look almost weightless, yet many contain extraordinarily complex structures. Lines twist and intersect. Surfaces appear to ripple. Materials seem to behave like water, skin, feathers, coral or some previously undiscovered natural substance.
Standing close to the pieces, we found ourselves continually discovering something new. The closer you look, the more there is to see.
It is also remarkable how Van Herpen makes technology feel organic. Her designs may be created using techniques associated with the future, but they rarely feel cold or mechanical. Instead, they often seem to have evolved naturally—as if they had grown rather than been constructed.
Iris van Herpen’s Vision of the Future
Van Herpen founded her fashion house in Amsterdam in 2007 and quickly became one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary fashion. Her work has been worn by internationally recognized performers and artists including Beyoncé, Björk, Cate Blanchett, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande.
But celebrity and fashion-world recognition are almost secondary to what makes this exhibition so compelling. Van Herpen is asking much larger questions: What is the relationship between the human body and its environment? How might technology change the way we understand ourselves? And what might the human form look like in the future?
Those questions give the exhibition a relevance that extends well beyond fashion.
A Must-See at the Brooklyn Museum
We have seen many important fashion exhibitions, but Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses is in a different category.
It is beautiful, strange, intellectually stimulating and, at times, almost overwhelming. Most of all, it is a reminder that fashion can be much more than something we wear. In Van Herpen’s hands, it can become sculpture, architecture, biology, technology and a vision of the future.
Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses is on view at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York, through December 6, 2026.
For tickets and exhibition information, visit the Brooklyn Museum.
