If that Iris van Herpen dress moved like it had a mind of its own, it’s thanks to Casey Curran

On Monday, Iris van Herpen returned to Paris Haute Couture Week with her signature brand of cerebral sorcery: floating organza in coral-like pleating, silk moulded into a billowing cloud-like wave, and a ‘living look’ embedded with 125 million Pyrocystis lunula (a bioluminescent algae) that stole the show. But tucked within the collection titled Sympoiesis was another kind of magic: a dress that bloomed and folded mid-walk, echoing the unforgettable kinetic arm pieces Mona Patel wore to the Met Gala in 2024. That Met moment—engineered by sculptor Casey Curran—marked the first time many had seen a garment not just shimmer or glow but move like a living thing.

Shortly after the van Herpen show, Curran’s phone buzzed with a message from Patel. “She said, ‘That looks very familiar ,’ and I was like, ‘History—because that was really a historic moment—doesn’t necessarily repeat itself but it does rhyme. There is this relationship between the two pieces and how they look and express themselves.”

Curran isn’t a fashion designer. He doesn’t live in Paris. He doesn’t attend shows. But over the past five years, the Seattle-based artist has become one of fashion’s most unusual collaborators—a sculptor whose hand-crank- or motor-powered kinetic creations have made their way to runways, red carpets, magazine covers, and the closets of the world’s most eccentric collectors. He makes flowers bloom, shoulders flutter, dresses expand and retract. Nothing is ever a gimmick, though. They’re sculptures—wired, weight-balanced, and built for wonder.

It may come as a surprise, but Curran’s first collaboration with van Herpen didn’t even make it to the show. “It’s always a gamble when designing these pieces, because you’re not sure if it will actually work,” he says. Though he had often watched Project Runway and imagined dabbling in fashion, the opportunity didn’t materialise until van Herpen reached out in 2019, asking him to create a crown for one of her presentations. “I got off the call and I think I screamed a little bit,” he recalls. “But what was interesting about the first collaboration we attempted was that I failed. I had gone through many iterations of trying to figure out how to make it move, and I just couldn’t get it to work right.” He ended up cracking the movement literally the day after the show, so the team revisited the design the following year for the couture showcase in 2021 and Winnie Harlow wore one of the crowns to the 2022 Met Gala.

In Curran’s world, failure isn’t an endpoint but part of ecology. The viral arm embellishments he created to go with Patel’s Met Gala look, for example, came from a mistake with his laser cutter. “For some reason it bumped and none of the shapes fell out. But I thought they could be something someday.” The shapes sat on a wall in his studio for almost three years. “When Mona called, I thought it was time. From there, I just kept iterating on the design, and that’s how we got these beautiful butterfly-lotus hybrids running up and down her arms.”

“I’m passionate about collective genius and championing talent early—and Casey’s work had that rare mix of depth and movement I was looking for. Linking his craft to Iris’s gown felt instinctive; their creative languages were clearly in sync,” says Patel, who has sported Curran’s pieces on various occasions, including Vogue World: Paris and the Met Gala. “This ensemble embodied that philosophy completely—movement, collaboration, and emotion. It wasn’t a handoff. It took hours of shared work to bring our visions together, which is exactly what made the outcome so special.”

Despite the futuristic quality of his work, Curran’s process is stubbornly analog. His primary tools? Illustrator and a laser cutter. “I design flat,” he explains. “I did origami all the time as a kid. And so, when I see these flat shapes, I can imagine them folding in on themselves and creating these three-dimensional forms,” he explains.

Each piece is born from slow, precise iteration—shapes shifted by millimetres, mechanics tested obsessively until the motion feels right. “A lot of my day is moving a hole just a millimetre at a time and then running prototypes over and over until I can find the movement that I’m really interested in capturing,” he says. I ask if that’s incredibly frustrating. “That’s actually the best part of the process. What’s frustrating is once the movement is right and then I realise, oh, now I have to put the whole project together,” he laughs.

Curran grew up in a house at the intersection of a river and a stream in rural Maple Valley, Washington, where he watched land form slowly, erode, and reform over decades. “You’re amidst nature, and you’re seeing these constant cycles,” he says. Van Herpen grew up new water too, in the Dutch village of Walpen, and so he sees that rhythm in her work as well. “I feel I understand where she’s coming from and her perspective on nature—this sense that we exist is connected to these larger systems that exist over long periods of time.”

While in high school, Curran was introduced to the works of Alexander Calder by his Art teacher. “There was this very simple sculpture of just this hokey-looking wire sculpture. You would turn a crank, and it would make these little fish wiggle around,” he recalls. Curran was already using wire—bending and twisting it to create shapes. “I just took that and started running with it, and it became an integral part of my practice. That folded into some of these larger interests with nature and longer life cycles.”

Interestingly, music is not part of his process. It’s about consistency. “I find that whenever I’m painting or sculpting, music changes the way my hands move. And I like to keep my own rhythm. Sometimes if I have to write emails, I’ll put on something classical. But when I’m working, I listen to audiobooks and podcasts. Crappy sci-fi, modern literature, the news—just something to let my mind wander while my hands do the work.” As for generative AI? He’s not interested. “I’ll run my artist statement through a tool just because often I’m not the best writer and my sentences don’t always line up,” he shrugs, “But I never use it to write or design or visualise.”

For the artist, kinetic fashion is closer to a ritual object than a wearable garment—rare, fragile, special. It’s no wonder that couture clients have begun to seek him out. Like social entrepreneur Jane Poon (“It’s really been her kind of pushing me to continue down this line of fashion and kinetics since my first-ever collaboration with Iris”) or Hong Kong-based singer Miriam Yeung, both of whom have worn his pieces. Curran admits kinetic couture isn’t the most wearable thing in the world. They’re “precious”, he says, designed to spark wonder not just for the wearer but also for everyone watching. “It’s so new. Being able to see that extra dimension in something someone wants to express—it’s really special. So, it is both [garment and object].”

He’s showcased these pieces as objects, too. In Writ Against the Sun, his 2024 exhibition at San Francisco’s Heron Arts, Curran hung his kinetic garments as if they were creatures suspended in a habitat of their own. “They existed almost in a symbiotic relationship with the body and then became their own thing—floating through space, having their own life.”

At the moment, Curran limits himself to no more than four fashion commissions a year—just enough to keep it exciting without derailing his larger studio practice. He still doesn’t consider himself a fashion person. “I only attend Iris’s shows. Maybe if another couture designer invited me, I’d show up—but nobody’s invited me yet,” he laughs. He reposted Daniel Roseberry’s reel with the beating heart with the caption, “I didn’t make it, but I love it!” (Note to Roseberry: he’s ready.) “It’s fascinating seeing more movement coming into the fashion world and just the possibilities that can exist,” he says of Schiaparelli’s piece. “I would love to do something with him. He has one dress right now that I would love to animate every single little eyeball on. Just blinking. It’d be super creepy but beautiful.”

The other dream collaborators on his list? “Oscar de la Renta. Rahul Mishra. Schiaparelli for sure.” Mostly, he scrolls Instagram, filtering designs through his mind to see what might move. “How would those designs work with an extra dimension of movement on top of it?”

For now, there’s a life-size whale skeleton he just finished building for Cannonball Arts, a new 66,000 sq ft event space in Seattle, and there’s an exhibition opening in Arizona this October that he hasn’t started working on yet. “As soon as I get back to Seattle, I have to work my fingers to the bone to make it as beautiful as possible. But after that…maybe something will come. Maybe I’ll do something for the next fashion week. I’m just putting it out in the universe. Who knows?”