{"id":70697,"date":"2026-06-01T00:01:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T22:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/?p=70697"},"modified":"2026-05-29T17:57:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T15:57:47","slug":"iris-van-herpen-new-york-01062026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/iris-van-herpen-new-york-01062026\/","title":{"rendered":"Iris van Herpen Brings 140 Haute Couture Pieces to New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iris van Herpen’s retrospective exhibition arrives in New York after stops in Paris, Brisbane, Singapore, and Rotterdam, marking its first visit to North America. From May 16 through December 6, 2026, the Brooklyn Museum will host “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses.” More than 140 haute couture pieces are displayed across the museum’s fifth floor, the result of nearly two decades of work in which the designer has blended fashion<\/a>, science, and digital fabrication.<\/p>\n

The exhibition was originally organized by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris in 2023<\/a> and has been on the road ever since. New York was always going to be a stop along the way.<\/p>\n

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The exhibition brings together more than 140 haute couture pieces.The exhibition brings together more than 140 haute couture pieces. (Photo credits: Iris van Herpen via Instagram.)<\/p><\/div>\n

For those who have followed van Herpen\u2019s work since her early days, this exhibition also offers an opportunity to put her technological legacy into perspective. In 2010, the designer presented the Crystallization top at Amsterdam Fashion Week: the first 3D-printed fashion piece showcased at a fashion week. The dress, designed in collaboration with architect Daniel Widrig and Materialise, was manufactured from white polyamide using selective laser sintering (SLS)<\/a> and took six full days to print.<\/p>

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That first piece was followed by years of experimentation with different technologies. In 2011 came the Skeleton dress, also made with SLS in white nylon. In 2018, the Foliage dress, developed with Delft University of Technology using PolyJet, took 3D printing to another level: petal patterns just 0.8 mm thick printed directly onto tulle, with 260 hours of continuous printing. Van Herpen didn’t stop there. In 2024 she presented her first 3D-printed wedding dress,<\/a> and in 2025 the Ecosophy, which combines organza and lace with 3D-printed elements.<\/p>\n

Not all the pieces in “Sculpting the Senses” are made using additive manufacturing. A version of the bubble dress worn by Eileen Gu at the last Met Gala also features in the exhibition: iridescent glass bubbles hand-fused using UV light. This is not an isolated case. Van Herpen works with laser cutting, parametric modeling, biologically inspired biomaterials, fractal geometry, and neuroscience. 3D printing is what comes up most often when people write about her designs, but her practice is broader and less easily categorized than that label suggests.<\/p>\n