Interesting Getup

Iris van Herpen Fall 2025 Couture

“The opening ‘Living Look’ is a first-of-its-kind vision - Inhabited by 125 million bioluminescent algae that emit light in response to movement. Created in collaboration with biodesigner Chris Bellamy @/bio.crafted, it is a living system cultivated in seawater and encapsulated in a specialized nutrient gel. A translucent protective coating allows light and air to pass through.

Because my first instinct is oh my god, that is incredibly cool. Bioluminescence! A living, interactive creation! Light in darkness! It's incredibly cool.

And then I run into ...

It's alive. It's a living, carefully nurtured biome fulling of living things. And it's made for someone to look cool wearing?

Like. It's so cool. But there's an oddness to the thought, that you've taken living things, built (with so much care!) an entire biosystem to support them, and it's just to wear. You're. You're using living things as a fashion statement.

Which. Algae. It's not that different from picking a flower and putting it behind your ear, I guess. It's such a beautiful and fantastically engineering system, and it looks stunning, and there's something to be said for the symbiosis of it, having created such a system to enable a living thing to be part of your look, it just ...