It's Alive!

New York Times

09-07-2025

Couture, the oldest and most elite of the fashion arts, the pieces made by hand for the very few, can sometimes seem like a fossil preserved in an amber corset. Which is why Iris van Herpen's work, both futuristic and deliberately kinetic, has always been so mesmerizing: skirts that jounce like jellyfish, extrusions that tremble like palm fronds, and sleeves (or sleeve-like appendages) that flutter like butterfly wings.
Even by her standards, however, the second look in the couture collection she showed in Paris was something else.
It was actually alive.
Made of 125 million bioluminescent algae known as Pyrocystis lunula that glow in response to movement (think the luminescent plankton that can make the ocean seem lit from within), the dress-and-leggings combination was grown in an gelatinlike substance that was then molded into one of Ms. van Herpen's signature sci-fi anatomical lattice frocks. Wearing it, the model resembled a very regal, otherworldly crustacean.
It had an aquatic tint and a vaguely squishy, jellylike veneer. And though it didn't exactly radiate megawatt beams when the model walked, it did emanate a soft blue haze. According to Ms. van Herpen, the look feels sort of visceral when worn. And for anyone wondering, it was not smelly.
More of an experiment than an actual for-sale item, the outfit was, Ms. van Herpen said backstage, 'the next step in not being inspired by nature, but collaborating with nature.'
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