Iris van Herpen Invites Brooklyn Museum Visitors to Help Create a New Couture Garment

The exhibition opened in New York on May 16, 2026, marking its North American debut.

It presents more than 140 haute couture designs by the Dutch designer alongside contemporary art, scientific objects and natural-history specimens, tracing the influences that shape her work at the intersection of fashion, science and technology.

A Couture Atelier Inside a Museum For the first time in her exhibition career, Iris van Herpen is appearing periodically throughout the show in what she calls performances.

Sitting at a table in the museum’s central rotunda, an area designed to evoke her Amsterdam atelier, she invites visitors to join her in pleating a length of fabric. The process will eventually form part of a new couture garment…