In 2010, Iris van Herpen, only three years after establishing her eponymous couture brand, sent the first 3D-printed garment down the runway as part of her “Crystallization” collection. A top evoking the skeletal structure of a snake with its ivory-colored coils of 3D-printed polyamide, the piece was a collaboration with British architect Daniel Widrig.

“It was a big moment,” says van Herpen, 41, as she contemplates the look on a form in the Brooklyn Museum galleries. “And it was definitely a starting point for me to collaborate with architects on new techniques.”

At the time, 3D printing was mostly the purview of architecture and engineers. Van Herpen was the first designer to utilize the technology for a wearable garment. More than 15 years later, she has continued to push the boundaries of material and technique, collaborating with architects, sculptors, chemists, multidisciplinary artists, bioengineers and astrophysicists. That evolution — and her many inspirations — is the subject of the mid-career retrospective, “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,” opening Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum. The show originated in 2023 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, which acquired the aforementioned 3D printed top in 2018, and has since traveled to Australia, Singapore and Rotterdam, Netherlands.

The Brooklyn Museum’s iteration is organized by Matthew Yokobosky, the institution’s senior curator of fashion and material culture, with Imani Williford, curatorial assistant, photography, fashion and material culture, and is augmented with new works drawn from the museum’s collections in American, Asian, contemporary and feminist art as well as scientific artifacts and natural history specimens including coral, fossils and skeletons. Dutch composer and music producer Salvador Breed, van Herpen’s life partner who also curates the music for her runway shows, composed the soundscape. 

Van Herpen’s groundbreaking work fuses traditional craftsmanship with technological innovation, transforming fashion into a meditation on the complexity of science and nature in a rapidly evolving world. Organized around eleven themes, “Sculpting the Senses” is an immersive exploration of van Herpen’s boundless curiosity and eclectic interests, from mathematics, astronomy and neuroscience to marine biology, paleontology, mycology and mineralogy.