“Hands are like a language,” Iris van Herpen says as we pleat a textile together inside the recreated atelier at the center of Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses. “Each pair that joins me in creating this dress will influence the DNA of the garment.”
A first of its kind, the live installation at the Brooklyn Museum invites visitors to work alongside the Dutch fashion designer in creating a garment that will evolve over the course of the show’s run.
“I want to share the most beautiful part of my work — the craftsmanship — in a really intimate setting,” van Herpen tells Hyperallergic in an interview. “My atelier is my most sacred space.”
Based in the Netherlands, she will periodically return to the recreated studio throughout the exhibition, transforming visitors’ pleated textiles into a garment and embroidering fragments of their conversations into it.
