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The first piece visitors encounter upon entering Iris van Herpen\u2019s new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in New York is the designer\u2019s 2016 bubble dress, a precursor to the 2026 iteration, which also emitted blown bubbles, that went viral when Eileen Gu<\/a> wore it to the Met Gala last week.<\/p>\n Opening on May 16, \u201cIris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses\u201d iterates on, but does not exactly replicate, the original show in Paris, which was organized by Clo\u00e9 Pitiot and Louise Curtis of the Mus\u00e9e des Arts D\u00e9coratifs<\/a> in 2023. Working in concert with the designer from New York is Matthew Yokobosky, senior curator of fashion and material culture, Brooklyn Museum, and Imani Williford, who have adapted the show\u2014van Herpen\u2019s first big splash stateside\u2014to fit their environs. Yokobosky calls it a mid-career retrospective as this month marks van Herpen\u2019s 19th year in business.<\/p>\n Almost two decades in, the designer remains sui generis. Van Herpen is one of the few to convincingly and organically introduce technology to couture, showing how uniqueness can be achieved through 3D printing. And she has channeled the forces of nature, creating mycelium lace and, most recently, a living dress<\/a> made of 125 million bioluminescent algae. This luminous wonder has made the trip to Brooklyn, where it is encased in glass, and is regularly refreshed with mist.<\/p>\n Van Herpen comes at fashion somewhat sideways, having been a dancer for years before she attended the ArtEZ University of the Arts in the Netherlands, and which may explain her reverence for the body. Eschewing the usual star system\u2014and with scientists, artists, and architects in her orbit\u2014van Herpen\u2019s practice is extremely collaborative; many of the pieces in the collections are co-credited. In these partnerships, aesthetics are only a part of the equation, as the focus is often on material development, technical advancement, and, believe it or not, functionality. \u201cOf course, you see a lot of collaborations in fashion that are marketing driven,\u201d said van Herpen on a recent walkthrough of the show. \u201cBut I think here there are collaborations that try to get fashion to find new materials, find new ways of making, but also to bring in sustainability to try to change the way we work.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI love the collaborations that I\u2019m having because for me the process is even more important than the end results, and the process is really an ongoing research,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s shaping me, it\u2019s forming me, and, by working with people from other disciplines, you really share knowledge. [When] fashion stays within its own bubble, it\u2019s not responding to the world. I think this exhibition is to really show the interproductiveness between philosophy, science, fashion, and art, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n Visitors\u2019 immersion into van Herpen\u2019s world takes place within 11 themed sections. If the Met\u2019s \u201cCostume Art<\/a>\u201d examines the topography of the body and its organs, \u201cSculpting the Senses\u201d drills down much deeper, to the molecular level, and not just of people, but of the natural world as well. The choreography of the exhibition is well done, as it travels from micro to macro, and, as Yakobosky notes, starts with the blue of water and ends with the blue of the cosmos. Along the way, he added, \u201cyou start to see relationships between different life forms.\u201d And also between art, nature, and fashion.<\/p>\n In the first half of 2026, an interesting trend has emerged in the form of three exhibitions that directly pair garments and artworks. The Museum at FIT kicked things off with \u201cArt x Fashion<\/a>,\u201d and now on display in the Met\u2019s new Cond\u00e9 M. Nast Galleries is Andrew Bolton\u2019s \u201cCostume Art<\/a>,\u201d which opened to the public on May 10. In it, art of all kinds is paired with garments to show the centrality of the dressed body across the museum\u2019s collections. \u201cIris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,\u201d completes the triptych by including artworks, though there are many fewer than at the Met, and they are used to different ends, most often to highlight the incredible materiality of van Herpen\u2019s work and its organic, morphing shapes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n