Iris Van Herpen’s New Living Bioluminescent Dress

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IIt was a most intriguing request. “I would love to be a human coral,” said Tekoui ‘Jérémie’ Tamari au Biodesiger Chris Bellamy, one night around the campfire.

Bellamy had gone to French Polynesia in the hope of developing new materials inspired by nature and spent weeks with indigenous communities there, learning their culture, wondering how his skills as an engineer and designer could be applied locally. It was the challenge he was looking for.

Bellamy worked with Jérémie, a local spear fisherman and a drum manufacturer, and “made him a swimsuit,” said Bellamy. He shone in the dark with the light of hundreds of bioluminescent algae, encapsulated in a gel, sewn in fabric. Jeremiah was a human scaffolding for living seaweed, as close to being a human coral as possible. Bioluminescence was more than artistic development. This helped to light up the way when Jeremiah went to fish at night.

Bellamy also made a bioluminescent drum and a necklace. The project had the impression of finally ending. It was then that he received an email from Iris Van Herpen, the Haute Couture Dutch designer. She had seen the swimsuit, and the drum, and she coveted a living dress for her summer collection from 2025 to Paris in July.

You could caress [the cells] with a feather and they … answered and emitted the light

Like Jeremiah, Van Herpen was looking for an artistic way to express and embody symbiosis in the wild through its creations. His July collection is titled NiceGreek for “co-creation”. But what Van Herpen wanted seemed too complex, said Bellamy, a full dress with a complex Corsry, members and an wrapped body and a cape. “It was completely impossible,” said Bellamy. However, he agreed to try.

The algae are masters of symbiosis and the species used by Bellamy, Pyrocystis Lunula– Named after their form of a moon crescent – is a close relative of algae living in corals. Pyrocystis The cells are surprisingly large, as wide as a wick of hair, and among other species, are responsible for “zeevonk”, bioluminescent flowers of algae which paint the seaside in a mysterious glow, which is particularly brilliant where the waves break at the shore. Each cell shines strongly when it is touched, “it’s incredibly reactive,” says Bellamy. “You could caress [the cells] With a feather and they … answered and emitted light. »»

In nature, their bioluminescence is the result of a defense mechanism that occurs in response to disturbances in water. When a predator approaches, it flashes a bioluminescent light, which serves as a warning signal and can even attract secondary predators which hunt the main predator of the cells. This is commonly known as the “burglary alarm” mechanism.

Bellamy came across the cells and the method to encapsulate them in a frost, of a publication in 2023 in Scientific advances. The objective of this work, a collaboration between the University of Amsterdam and the University of California in San Diego, was to produce a flexible but resistant material that emits light during mechanical deformation. “These cells, they actually have this immense bandwidth of what they can feel,” said Northho Schramma, one of the co-authors of the study. “They are extremely sensitive, but they can also react to very strong forces.”

Bellamy has teamed up with Schramma to cultivate and model life equipment, which Iris Van Herpen house seamstresses then used to create the dress. “It took three months of experimentation,” said Bellamy. “And then the day before the deadline to make the spectacle equipment, I had the first sample that worked.”

Keeping algae alive inside the frost is delicate. The cells thrive in a narrow temperature range and need nutrients and a saline solution to stay alive. The frost should breathe, but too much air exposure can bring contaminants, such as bacteria or mushrooms, which can grow too much algae inside. The most difficult part was to achieve the right consistency, something “firmer than the pudding with your grandmother’s jelly,” said Bellamy, but it could still be tight through a syringe, molded and fabric.

The dress made its debut on the track on July 7 in Paris, during the Haute Couture Week. For Bellamy, the most interesting part of the project was to observe the relationship that developed between Iris workshop and equipment. “The material has a bedtime, the material has a waking time, the material is offset,” he said. “It is this fragility that makes liveliness so beautiful. ”

Jip Mus & Dammes Kieft head photo

• Elena Kazamia

  Published on July 29, 2025

  Elena Kazamia is a scientific writer from Greece. She holds a master’s degree in conservation of the University College of London and a doctorate. in the vegetable sciences of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom