Behind the scenes | The Infinity Dress | Alice Curiouser and Curiouser | V&A

Follow our Conservation specialists as they display the incredible moving ’Omniverse’ sculpture alongside the fragile feather ’Infinity’ dress, creating a mesmerising visual illusion which resembles a hypnotic portal to another world – or Wonderland. The ’Infinity’ dress is a spectacular piece of engineering created by Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen and American sculptor Anthony Howe. Howe designed the spherical ’Omniverse’ sculpture, which Iris van Herpen collaborated on as a central feature in her Hypnosis collection runway show in 2019. The dress was originally designed to be worn on the catwalk by a model who walked through the ’Omniverse’ sculpture as a portal for the collection, creating a state of hypnosis for the audience. The work plays with the concepts of space, time and scale, reminiscent of Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland books. This is the first time they have been shown in a museum.