DALLAS, TX.- The Dallas Museum of Art presents a major touring exhibition of work by visionary Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen, a cutting-edge artist inspired by diverse influences in the arts, sciences and philosophy. Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion features one-of-a-kind haute couture—acclaimed for its combination of traditional handcraftsmanship and futuristic, innovative materials and techniques—and includes some of the world’s first examples of 3-D–printed fashion design.

On view at the DMA May 21 through August 20, 2017, Iris van Herpen presents seven years of the artist’s original haute couture. The exhibition, organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and Groninger Museum, the Netherlands, showcases 43 exquisite outfits from 15 of her collections. All outfits are displayed on custom mannequins and are made from an astonishing array of materials and methods that fuse style, science and technology.

“The Dallas Museum of Art is pleased to showcase Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion. This exhibition appeals not only to the fashion-forward but also to those interested in the worlds of science, technology and innovation. This exhibition follows the success of the Museum's first foray into contemporary fashion design—the 2011 touring exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk—and offers visitors another opportunity to explore the oeuvre of an equally visionary and innovative virtuoso at the outset of her career,” said Agustín Arteaga, the Museum’s Eugene McDermott Director. “DMA exhibitions like this, which feature works outside of the Museum’s primary collecting areas, such as contemporary fashion design, demonstrate the Museum’s responsiveness to community interests and its versatility and excellence in exhibition design and interpretation.”

With a dynamic and path-breaking body of work, Iris van Herpen is widely heralded as a pioneering voice in fashion. She is known for her willingness to experiment—incorporating unexpected materials ranging from umbrella tines to magnets, exploring new fabrics created through the manipulation of iron filings in resin, and pushing the boundaries of technologies such as 3-D printing through collaborations with fellow artists, architects and manufacturers. Her work has graced the runways of Amsterdam, London and Paris, captured the attention and admiration of style icons such as Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Björk, and appeared in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s acclaimed group exhibition Manus x Machina in 2016. This exhibition documents the evolution of Iris van Herpen’s haute couture through a selection of her collections from 2008 through 2015 and illustrates the many ways she continues to seek inspiration.

“From her 2007 debut collection, Chemical Crows, to the present, Iris van Herpen has presented a singular and powerful point of view that informed the conceptual underpinnings, material elements, construction methods and formal characteristics of her collections and the designs therein; the result is a body of work diverse in inspiration and execution, yet aesthetically cohesive and identifiable,” said Samantha Robinson, the Museum’s Interim Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts and Design and presenting exhibition curator. “The Museum’s presentation of Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion demonstrates how van Herpen has adapted, expanded and refined this viewpoint over the course of 15 collections, in the process resurrecting meticulous, traditional sartorial techniques, catalyzing the development of radical materials and methods, and presenting the bold, original haute couture designs on view in the exhibition.” She will celebrate her 10-year anniversary next July during Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week.

Even as a youth, Iris van Herpen (b. 1984 in Wamel, the Netherlands) had an instinctual appreciation of fashion and art. While attending the Preparatory Course Art & Design at the Artez Institute of the Arts Arnhem, she became interested in designing clothes. Van Herpen went on to study Fashion Design at Artez and held internships with Alexander McQueen in London and Claudy Jongstra in Amsterdam. She graduated in 2006 with a collection entitled “Machine Jewellery” that confirmed her attention to the visualization of elusive concepts and her inventiveness in material use and treatment. Within a year after graduating, van Herpen began designing womenswear collections under her own name. Through her extensive interdisciplinary research and collaborations with other artists, van Herpen has developed a unique style aesthetic that has been applauded by TIME magazine, InStyle, Women’s Wear Daily and other notable publications. In 2011, at age 27, she became the youngest member ever to join the exclusive official calendar of the Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week, and in 2014 she was awarded the highly prestigious ANDAM Award. Her designs are currently featured in the collections of the High Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.