High-fashion model Stella Maxwell got dressed for Iris van Herpen’s most recent haute couture show in the dark. Around her, flashes of ultra-dim red light—designed to maintain the illusion of night—were the only respite that allowed stylists to slip her into the show’s opening gown. As the stylists worked to fasten the garment around Maxwell, it became the room’s source of illumination. Every small bit of pressure applied to the fabric caused it to glow an otherworldly blue. That’s because Maxwell’s dress was made of living, touch-activated, bioluminescent organisms.  The gown was revealed on July 7 as the debut look of Sympoiesis, Van Herpen’s Autumn/Winter 2025-2026 show at Paris Fashion Week. Crafted in collaboration with biodesigner Chris Bellamy, who runs his own studio called Bio Crafted, the dress is made of 125 million Pyrocystis lunula, a form of microalgae that evolved to emit light when touched. [Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted] Fashion designers often talk about bringing a look to life, but in this case, Van Herpen requested that Bellamy quite literally design a living dress. While the Dutch designer has experimented broadly with material science and sustainable fashion in the past—building 3D-printed shoes, fabric made from trash, and gowns crafted from ocean plastic—this is the first time she’s sent living organisms out onto the runway. To make it happen, Bellamy was tasked with not only shepherding millions of microalgae through their early life cycle in just two months, but also finding a way to keep them alive on a moving garment. He says that involved reviving the dress just days before the show. The quest for “biological dark matter” Bellamy, who started his career in engineering, says he’s always had an interest in “working on the cutting edge of sustainability.” He helped develop Jaguar Land Rover’s first-ever electric vehicle, the Jaguar I-Pace, and later tried his hand in the footwear industry by designing recyclable shoes for the brand Salomon.  During those early years, though, Bellamy came to feel that his projects were either reliant on materials that ultimately weren’t sustainable enough to make a major difference, or on humans to dispose of them correctly (case in point, he says, is that most customers didn’t actually recycle the recyclable shoes). Ultimately, these frustrations led him to abandon his early career and follow the less-charted path of biodesign.  At Bio Crafted, Bellamy focuses on finding new ways to incorporate living materials into everyday life and products. That goal introduced him to a field called bioprospecting, which involves searching for as-yet-undiscovered microorganisms and learning their unique properties. “They say that for every one organism we know, there are 100,000 that we don’t know,” Bellamy says. “That 100,000 is termed ‘biological dark matter,’ and in that there might be new cancer treatments, there might be new vaccines, there might be things that we can’t even possibly imagine.” [Photo: courtesy Bio Crafted] In 2023, Bellamy’s quest for this “biological dark matter” led him to the French Polynesian island of Moorea. There, he collaborated with artist and researcher Tokainiua Jean-Daniel Devatine and cultural educator Tekoui “Jérémie” Tamari on a project called “Lucid Life,” which used existing Indigenous science to create a collection of living objects out of two local strains of bioluminescent algae. In their natural deep ocean habitats, these microorganisms evolved an energy-efficient way to scare off predators. Whenever pressure is applied to the algae—by, say, a small fish—the algae activate a chemical reaction to emit light. Their bioluminscence is designed not to scare that small fish away but to attract an even bigger secondary predator to intimidate the first. For 18 months, Bellamy worked on finding a way to incorporate these glowing microorganisms into a garment. Because the algae rely on photosynthesis for energy (and operate on a circadian rhythm similar to that of a human’s), he needed a process that would protect the algae while still allowing light to reach them. After continuous trial and error, he found a solution: By suspending the algae in a nutrient gel and encapsulating the mixture in a transparent membrane, he could prevent any bacteria or oil from disrupting the algae and still preserve its photosynthetic properties. The final product—a glowing blue textile fashioned into a swimsuit—is what first caught Van Herpen’s eye. “Iris read my research around livingness, and the title of her collection was Sympoiesis, which is this wonderful concept about the interconnectedness of nature,” Bellamy says. “For her, this was a really tangible expression of the whole theme of sympoiesis. Initially, when we met, I said, ‘Okay, I can make a small piece of material. And Iris said, ‘Let’s make a whole dress.’” [Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio