At ELYSIAN, we have long been admirers of Iris van Herpen. There is something almost impossible about her work: garments that appear to breathe, ripple, float and transform around the women wearing them. They are dresses, technically. But stand before one and the word fashion suddenly feels far too small.
Photo: Paula Abreu Pita / Courtesy Iris van Herpen
That idea is at the heart of Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses, now on view at the Brooklyn Museum through January 3, 2027. The exhibition brings together more than 140 haute couture creations alongside contemporary art, design and scientific objects, making a compelling argument for something Van Herpen has spent her career demonstrating: fashion can be sculpture, engineering, movement and imagination all at once.
Born in the Netherlands in 1984, Van Herpen grew up surrounded by nature and studied classical dance from an early age, experiences that would profoundly shape her understanding of movement and the human body. After working with Alexander McQueen and textile artist Claudy Jongstra, she founded her Amsterdam-based maison in 2007. Just three years later, she presented her first 3D-printed dress, from her Crystallization collection, helping push an emerging technology into the vocabulary of haute couture.
Yet technology alone does not explain the emotional force of her work.
Van Herpen looks to biology, architecture, physics, dance and the natural world, then combines those influences with traditional couture craftsmanship. Her creations can evoke wings, skeletons, waves, microscopic organisms or forms that seem borrowed from another planet. The result is not technology replacing the human hand, but innovation expanding what that hand can create.
That distinction feels particularly powerful when her work is seen on women.
Beyoncé, Björk, Lady Gaga, Cate Blanchett, Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman are among the women who have worn Van Herpen’s designs. Her relationship with her muses is part of a broader collaborative philosophy in which artists, architects, scientists and performers enter the creative process. Rather than simply dressing a woman, Van Herpen seems interested in what clothing can reveal about her presence, individuality and power.
The Brooklyn Museum exhibition makes those connections visible. Couture is presented in conversation with contemporary artworks and objects from the natural sciences, inviting visitors to move between disciplines that museums have traditionally kept separate. The exhibition itself began at Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2023 before traveling internationally and making its North American debut in Brooklyn in May 2026.
Perhaps that is why Van Herpen’s work feels so relevant now. She represents a kind of creativity unconcerned with staying inside the lines drawn around a particular discipline. Fashion becomes art. Science becomes inspiration. Technology becomes craftsmanship. The body becomes part of the sculpture.
And behind it all is a woman whose willingness to imagine differently has created space for others to do the same.
In an industry built around what comes next, Iris van Herpen offers something more enduring: a reminder that the most exciting future may belong to those brave enough to create what has never existed before.
If you find yourself in Brooklyn, make time for Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses. And if New York City is not already on your calendar, this extraordinary exhibition may be reason enough to plan the trip.