It is rare to walk into a fashion exhibition and find yourself next to a fossil. At the Brooklyn Museum, that is part of the plan. Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses places more than 140 haute couture creations by the Dutch designer alongside contemporary artworks, scientific artifacts and natural-history specimens such as coral, fossils and skeletons. It is the North American debut of a touring show, the first major New York presentation of her work, and it closes on December 6, 2026.
If you have been meaning to go, this is the moment.
A couturier who works like a scientist
Van Herpen is known for pairing traditional couture handwork with new technologies. In the museum’s description, her designs draw on biomimicry, fractal geometry and mathematics, and neuroscience, and have been worn by Beyoncé, Björk, Cate Blanchett, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande. The exhibition was organized by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, where, according to W magazine, it originated in 2023 before traveling.
In Brooklyn, it is organized by Matthew Yokobosky, the museum’s senior curator of fashion and material culture, with curatorial assistant Imani Williford, and spreads across 15,000 square feet of the fifth floor. W noted that the show is billed as a midcareer retrospective, and that van Herpen opened her own studio when she was just 22.
From the ocean floor to outer space
The show is built as a journey, from the ocean’s depths to the outer reaches of the universe, through water, motion, sound and light. W reports that it opens with the Seijaku Dress from her fall 2016 haute couture collection, set before a mixed-media work by the Japanese art collective 目 [Mé] made for the exhibition. Red-carpet watchers may recognize the silhouette: W pointed out that it inspired the bubbled mini Eileen Gu wore to this year’s Met Gala.
Water runs through everything. “I grew up between two rivers in the Netherlands, and my studio is next to the river as well,” van Herpen told W. “Water is the origin of life, and it’s the most vital material that we have on the planet.” A section on sea life follows, with dresses inspired by jellyfish and coral, before galleries on form place laser-cut dresses beside work by her longtime collaborator, the artist Rogan Brown. W singles out the Hydrozoa Dress of 2020, from the Sensory Seas collection.
The pairings are the show’s signature. In one room, skeletal designs sit beside fossils, including, W reports, a 180 million-year-old Stenopterygius. The museum lists more than 20 artists and designers in conversation with the clothes, among them Philip Beesley, Casey Curran, Wim Delvoye, Tara Donovan, Kim Keever, Nick Knight, James Turrell and Tim Walker. A soundscape by the composer Salvador Breed, van Herpen’s partner, runs through the galleries, and W notes an auditory thread that reflects her synesthesia, with pieces inspired by her ability to visualize sound.
Inside the atelier
The section most worth lingering over was made for Brooklyn. According to W, a version of van Herpen’s atelier has been reconstructed in the museum’s atrium, its walls lined with thousands of fabric and material scraps, with real-time footage from her Dutch studio projected at the center. Visitors can touch samples and look through microscopes. The footage helps explain why, as W reports, a single dress can take up to six months to make.
The idea came from the designer herself. “I love the architecture here,” van Herpen told W of the museum’s Beaux-Arts building. “The building makes everything breathe more.”
The final rooms change the mood. In the penultimate gallery, Cosmic Bloom, dresses in every color hang from the ceiling, some on mannequins installed upside down. The last gallery is a wall of famous women dressed in van Herpen, including Rihanna and Natalie Portman, which W likens to the journey’s end point, from microscopic sea life to the stars. Elsewhere in the show, W reports, is the gown Gwendoline Christie wore to the season 8 premiere of Game of Thrones in 2019, a reminder of how often these laboratory pieces have ended up in front of cameras.
Why it matters for New York
For designers and students in the city, the show is a rare chance to see couture as research. It makes a case that the most experimental ideas in fashion often begin far from the runway, in a lab, a riverbank or a natural-history drawer, and that craft and technology are partners, not rivals. It also continues the Brooklyn Museum’s long record of fashion exhibitions, which the museum itself cites alongside its roots as an institute of both arts and sciences.
The Brooklyn presentation also has a European accent beyond its subject. It is supported in part by DutchCultureUSA, a program of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the United States.
Plan your visit
The exhibition is in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing and the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery on the fifth floor of the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway. Timed tickets are required. An audio guide is available on the Bloomberg Connects app.
The museum’s calendar lists several programs in the final weeks. Sculpting the (Un)Spoken: A Participatory Performance with Iris van Herpen runs on October 30 and 31 and November 1, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. An ASL tour is scheduled for November 14, and a session for visitors 65 and over, A Close Look, for November 10. Check the museum’s site for tickets and any changes before you go.
Read on: what the term really means in What Haute Couture Really Means, and where else to see fashion in the city in The Museum at FIT, Explained.
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Sources
- Brooklyn Museum, “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” (exhibition page, May 16–December 6, 2026)
- W magazine, “Iris van Herpen’s New Retrospective Transcends Time, Space, and the Senses” (2026)
Photo: “Brooklyn Museum June 2008 sunset jeh” by Jim.henderson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Editor’s note: facts in this article were checked against the linked sources in October 2026. Iris van Herpen’s words are quoted as published by W magazine; gallery-by-gallery descriptions, the fossil, the atelier and the six-month figure are as reported by W. Dates, locations, programs and ticketing come from the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition page and can change. The featured photograph shows the museum building in 2008, not the exhibition.
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