“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.”
The live installation, the first of its kind, is on view at the Brooklyn Museum and invites visitors to work alongside the Dutch fashion designer on a garment that will continue to change over the course of the exhibition.
“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 return periodically to the recreated studio throughout the show, turning visitors’ pleated textiles into a garment and stitching fragments of their conversations into it.
