Fashion exhibitions can sometimes flatten clothing into a timeline of important looks. Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses, now on view at the Brooklyn Museum, takes a far more immersive approach. The exhibition brings together more than 140 haute couture creations, displayed alongside contemporary art, sculpture, design objects and scientific specimens.
The result is mysterious and powerful. Van Herpen’s garments appear to float, expand and occasionally sprout across the galleries. Some evoke waves, coral, jellyfish, shells or the branching systems found inside the human body. Others seem almost extraterrestrial. Even when the materials and construction methods are highly advanced, the clothes rarely feel cold or overly mechanical. They remain closely connected to the natural world.
One of the exhibition’s greatest strengths is the way the garments are placed in conversation with the objects and ideas that inspired them. Dresses are shown beside sculptures, artworks, fossils and marine specimens, allowing visitors to immediately see the relationship between Van Herpen’s shapes and the wider worlds of biology, architecture and art.
The ocean is an especially strong presence. Van Herpen grew up near water, and its movement, transparency and unpredictability have remained central to her work. Throughout the exhibition, garments ripple, curl and fan outward, capturing the feeling of water in motion without simply copying it.
Van Herpen is often described through the technology she uses, including 3D printing and laser cutting, but the exhibition makes clear that technique is only part of the story. What matters more is her imagination and her ability to turn complex ideas about nature, science, movement and the body into clothing with a strong emotional pull.
There is also something refreshing about seeing fashion treated not as an accessory to art, but as art itself. Van Herpen’s garments do not need to borrow importance from the paintings and sculptures surrounding them. Instead, the pairings reveal a shared language of shape, texture, rhythm and transformation.
By the end, Sculpting the Senses feels less like a traditional fashion retrospective than an invitation into Van Herpen’s universe, one where the boundaries separating clothing, sculpture, science and nature dissolve. It is strange, beautiful and occasionally unsettling, but never without wonder.
Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses is on view at the Brooklyn Museum through December 6, 2026.
Check out additional images from the exhibit below, all photographed by Snobette.
