The Dutch-born Iris van Herpen is called a fashion designer but she’s light years ahead of everyone else. Her designs are something between Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau—they’re full of mind-blowing hybrid shapes and strange materials. Van Herpen has taken inspiration from crows, refinery smoke, mummies, electricity, worms, Gothic cathedrals, and more. She uses cutting-edge technology and 3-D printing to make gowns that are both magical and monstrous. This exhibition in Paris places over 100 of her couture pieces in dialogue with contemporary artworks and with artifacts from natural history, objects such as skeletons and fossils. “Sculpting the Senses” promises to be a fashion exhibition like no other. —Laura Jacobs