The Kimono is More than an Artefact and More than Clothing. It is a Concept Artists Will Make their Own

Installation view of the 'Kimono' exhibition on display until October 5th, 2025, at NGV International, Melbourne, Australia. Photograph: Mitch Fong. 

By Sasha Grishin, Australian National University

Issey Miyake after Ikko Tanaka,
Sharaku, 2016. Coat, necklace,
hair comb, bangle and bag.
National Gallery of Victoria 
© Miyake Design Studio

The kimono garment, the national dress of Japan, carries within itself all of the magic and traditions of Japanese culture.

The basic features of the kimono are fairly simple. It is a wrapped front garment with square sleeves that has a rectangular body where the left side is wrapped over the right, except in funerary use.

The garment may be traced back to the Heian period as a distinctive style of dress for the nobility. In the Edo period (1603–1867) it came to a glorious culmination with colourful and expensive fabrics.

The great poet Matsuo Bashō once wrote “Spring passes by / again and again in layers / of blossom-kimono”. Since childhood I’ve loved the mystical image “blossom-kimono”.

In 2020, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London staged their epic exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, where hundreds of garments, accessories, prints and photographs charted the history of the kimono from the 17th century through to the present.

A new exhibition from the National Gallery of Victoria is similarly ambitious. Over 70 fabulous garments of exquisite craftsmanship – some made of silk with gold and silver embroidery and dazzling designs – have been assembled within a context of over 150 paintings, posters, wood block prints, magazines and decorative arts.

Although many of the items have never been previously exhibited in Australia, most are now in the collection of the NGV, with many specifically acquired for this exhibition.

Exquisite production

There are seven newly acquired Edo-period silk and ramie kimonos, richly decorated with leaves, tendrils and falling snow. They provide us with a glimpse at the wealth and sophistication of the samurai and merchant classes of the 18th and 19th centuries.

One of the highlights is the Uchikake Furisode wedding kimono with pine, bamboo, plum and cranes, from the early to mid-19th century.

It is a display of exquisite taste with satin silk, shibori tie dyeing, and embroidery with gold thread. The birds and the vegetation seem to float on the surface and must have created an amazing sight when worn.

Uchikake Furisode wedding kimono with pine, bamboo, plum, and cranes early–mid 19th century. Satin silk, shibori tie dyeing, embroidery, gold thread, 177.5 cm (centre back) 131.0 cm (cuff to cuff). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by Michael and Emily Tong, 2024

The garment is simple and functional and, despite the exquisiteness of its production, it is also restrained in contrast to the conspicuous exuberance of some examples of 19th century European courtly dress.

Some of these Edo period kimonos can become quite narrative-driven in their design, as with the Hitoe kosode kimono with themes alluding to eight Noh theatre plays of the late Edo period. Slightly smaller than the wedding kimono, that was 177.5 cm long as opposed to 167 cm, this one revels in a blue background on gauze satin silk with a multiplicity of little narrative scenes like an assembly of diverse stage sets.

Hitoe kosode, kimono with themes alluding to eight Noh theatre plays late Edo period. Gauze satin silk, paste resist dye, embroidery, gold thread, 167.0 cm (centre back) 124.0 cm (cuff to cuff). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by Jennifer Lempriere and Michael Pithie, 2024

The exhibition also includes the work of contemporary Japanese kimono designers including Hiroko Takahashi, Jotaro Saito, Modern Antenna, Tamao Shigemune, Y&SONS, Rumi Rock and Robe Japonica.

The kimono as a concept

The kimono is more than an historic artefact, one where ideas and methods of production were to remain constant for centuries. It is also an idea that inspires designers working in international fashion houses.

The NGV exhibition includes kimono-inspired works of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, John Galliano, Comme des Garçon, Alexander McQueen, Givenchy, Zambesi and Rudi Gernreich.

Alexander McQueen’s Gown, belt and sandals (Dégradé) (2007) is one of the takeaway memories from this exhibition. The humble functional kimono has been totally transfigured.

To the silk-satin shell there have been added leather, metal and rubber accessories and synthetic shoulder pads. The purple and pink colour scheme and the sweeping sleeves that trail along the ground create a mesmerising and dominant phantom-like character that owns and dominates the space.

Gown, belt and sandals (Dégradé), 2007. The blue lady (La Dame Bleue) collection, spring-summer 2008. Silk (satin), patent leather, leather, synthetic fabric (shoulder pads, wadding), cotton (laces), metal (fastenings), rubber, (a) 176.0 cm (centre back) 33.5 cm (waist, flat) (dress) (b) 37.0 × 61.0 cm (belt) (c-d) 23.0 × 19.5 × 80.0 cm (each) (sandals). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2021 ©Alexander McQueen

It is difficult not to be impressed by McQueen’s vision, but we have now moved quite a long way from the kimono.

The kimono is a wonderful concept – an armature on which to hang many different ideas. The beauty of this exhibition is that it frees the idea of a garment from a static piece of cloth, at best to be displayed on a dummy, to something approaching a concept in design that artists will clasp and from which they will create their own work.

There are many rich nuances in the show, for example the superb almost monochrome and somewhat gothic Men’s undergarment (nagajuban) with graveyard, skulls and crescent moon (c.1930).

Men’s undergarment (nagajuban) with graveyard, skulls and crescent moon c. 1930. Silk, wool, cotton 127.0 cm (centre back) 130.5 cm (cuff to cuff). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Maureen Morrisey Bequest, 2018

At the same time, we have Women’s kimono with geometric design and accessories (c.1930) with its polychrome exuberance with reds, blacks and greys combining geometric motifs with soft organic feather-like forms.

Bashō’s “blossom-kimono” was a meditation on the passing of time and the hope that a young girl will live to experience wrinkles that come with old age. The kimono in this exhibition celebrates the passing of time and generational change within the life of an immortal idea about function, form and ideas of beauty.

Kimono is at the National Gallery of Victoria until October 5.

By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

Can’t Work Out Without Music? Neither Could the Ancient Greeks and Romans

Girl exercising to a musician playing the aulos, an ancient Greek wind instrument, Greek Red Figure ceramic calyx crater, 440-430 BC. Altes Museum, Berlin, Germany. 

By Konstantine Panegyres

These days when you see people exercising, they’re usually also listening to music, whether they’re at the gym, or out jogging on the street. It makes sense, as studies have shown listening to music can help you get the most out of a workout. Somehow the ancient Greeks and Romans knew this too, long before modern science was there to back it.

A more than 2,000-year-old habit

In his oration To the People of Alexandria, the Greek writer Dio Chrysostom (40-110 CE) complained about a phenomenon he saw all the time.

Dio wrote people loved to listen to music in their daily activities. According to him, music could be found in the courtroom, in the lecture theatre, in the doctor’s room, and even in the gym.

“Everything is done to music […] people will presently go so far as to use song to accompany their exercise in the gymnasium,” Dio wrote.

But exercising to music wasn’t a new thing in his day. This practice has been recorded across the ancient Greek and Roman worlds from the earliest times, and as far back as the poems of Homer (circa 800 BCE).

Why exercise to music?

There are many depictions of professional athletes training, or competing, to the accompaniment of music in ancient Greek vase paintings.

In one vase painting from the 5th century BCE, a group of athletes trains while a musician plays the aulos, a type of ancient pipe instrument.

Young men exercising to the sound of an aulos player (an ancient wind instrument). Wikimedia

The ancient writer Plutarch of Chaeronea (46-119 CE) tells us music was also played while people wrestled or did athletics.

Athenian writer Flavius Philostratus (circa 170-245 CE) offers clues as to why. In a book about gymnastics, Philostratus wrote music served to stimulate athletes, and that their performance might be improved through listening to music.

Today’s researchers have proven this to be true. One 2020 study involving 3,599 participants showed listening to music during exercise had many benefits, such as reducing the perception of fatigue and exertion, and improving physical performance and breathing.

Singing and trumpets

Since ancient people didn’t have electronic devices, they found other ways to exercise to music. Some had music played by a musician during their exercise routine. Others sang while they exercised.

Singing while playing ball games was particularly popular. In Homer’s Odyssey (circa 8th century BCE), Nausicaa, the daughter of the King of Phaeacia, plays a ball game with her girl friends, and they all sing songs as they play.

Similarly, the historian Carystius of Pergamum (2nd century BCE) wrote the women of his time “sang as they played ball”.

Another popular activity was dancing to music. Dancing was widely regarded as a gymnastic exercise people could do for better health.

One famous advocate of the benefits of dancing as exercise was the great Athenian philosopher Socrates (circa 470-399 BCE). According to the historian Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE), “it was Socrates’ regular habit to dance, thinking that such exercise helped to keep the body in good condition”.

Exercising to music was depicted in several ancient Greek vase painting. Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-SA

Apart from individuals using music in their personal exercise, soldiers also did training exercises, and marched to battle, to the sound of trumpets.

Don’t skip leg day

There was a belief in ancient Greek and Roman that music and exercise played an important role in shaping and developing the body and soul.

The ideal was harmony and moderation. The body and soul needed to be balanced and proportionate in all their parts, without any excess. As such, doing one kind of exercise too often, or exercising one body part excessively, was frowned upon.

The physician Galen of Pergamum (129-216 CE) criticized types of exercise that focused too much on one part of the body. He preferred ball games as they exercised the whole body evenly.

Immoderation in music – that is, listening to too much, or listening to music that was too emotional – was also sometimes frowned upon.

For example, the Athenian philosopher Plato (circa 428-348 BCE) famously argued most music should be censored as it can stir the passions too strongly. Plato thought only simple and unemotional music, listened to in moderation, should be allowed.

If the ancients could see today’s people running along the pavement with music thumping in their ears, they would surely be amazed. And they’d probably approve – as long as it wasn’t being done in excess.

Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

How strawberries and Cream were a Rare and Exciting Treat for Victorians Before Becoming a Wimbledon Icon

Strawberries and Cream by Raphaelle Peale (1816) National Gallery of Art. Cover picture by Jay Zoo for DAM.  

By Rebecca Earle

Wimbledon is all about strawberries and cream (and of course tennis). The club itself describes strawberries and cream as “a true icon of The Championships”.

While a meal at one of the club’s restaurants can set you back £130 or more, a bowl of the iconic dish is a modest £2.70 (up from £2.50 in 2024 – the first price rise in 15 years). In 2024 visitors munched their way through nearly 2 million berries.

Strawberries and cream has a long association with Wimbledon. Even before lawn tennis was added to its activities, the All England Croquet Club (now the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club) was serving strawberries and cream to visitors. They would have expected no less. Across Victorian Britain, strawberries and cream was a staple of garden parties of all sorts. Private affairs, political fundraisers and county cricket matches all typically served the dish.

Alongside string bands and games of lawn tennis, strawberries and cream were among the pleasures that Victorians expected to encounter at a fête or garden party. As a result, one statistician wrote in the Dundee Evening Telegraph in 1889, Londoners alone consumed 12 million berries a day over the summer. At that rate, he explained, if strawberries were available year-round, Britons would spend 24 times more on strawberries than on missionary work, and twice as much as on education.

But of course strawberries and cream were not available year-round. They were a delightful treat of the summer and the delicate berries did not last. Victorian newspapers, such as the Illustrated London News, complained that even the fruits on sale in London were a sad, squashed travesty of those eaten in the countryside, to say nothing of London’s cream, which might have been watered down.

Wimbledon’s lawn tennis championships were held in late June or early July – in the midst, in other words, of strawberry season.

Eating strawberries and cream had long been a distinctly seasonal pleasure. Seventeenth-century menu plans for elegant banquets offered strawberries, either with cream or steeped (rather deliciously, and I recommend you try this) in rose water, white wine, and sugar – as a suitable dish for the month of June.

Strawberries and Cream by Robert Gemmell Hutchison (1855–1936). National Galleries of Scotland, CC BY-NC

They were, in the view of the 17th-century gardener John Parkinson, “a cooling and pleasant dish in the hot summer season”. They were, in short, a summer food. That was still the case in the 1870s, when the Wimbledon tennis championship was established.

This changed dramatically with the invention of mechanical refrigeration. From the late 19th century, new technologies enabled the global movement of chilled and frozen foods across vast oceans and spaces.

Domestic ice-boxes and refrigerators followed. These modern devices were hailed as freeing us from the tyranny of seasons. As the Ladies Home Journal magazine proclaimed triumphantly in 1929: “Refrigeration wipes out seasons and distances … We grow perishable products in the regions best suited to them instead of being forced to stick close to the large markets.” Eating seasonally, or locally, was a tiresome constraint and it was liberating to be able to enjoy foods at whatever time of year we desired.

As a result, points out historian Susan Friedberg, our concept of “freshness” was transformed. Consumers “stopped expecting fresh food to be just-picked or just-caught or just-killed. Instead, they expected to find and keep it in the refrigerator.”

Strawberries and cream being enjoyed at Wimbledon. bonchan/Shutterstock

Today, when we can buy strawberries year-round, we have largely lost the excitement that used to accompany advent of the strawberry season. Colour supplements and supermarket magazines do their best to drum up some enthusiasm for British strawberries, but we are far from the days when poets could rhapsodise about dairy maids “dreaming of their strawberries and cream” in the month of May.

Strawberries and cream, once a “rare service” enjoyed in the short months from late April to early July, are now a season-less staple, available virtually year round from the global networks of commercial growers who supply Britain’s food. The special buzz about Wimbledon’s iconic dish of strawberries and cream is a glimpse into an earlier time, and reminds us that it was not always so.

Rebecca Earle, Professor of History, University of Warwick

Paris Haute Couture: Wearing the Winter of the Soul ~ Yuima Nakazato’s Elegiac Invocation of Glacial Beauty

Ceramic sculptural "armour" was a metaphor for the fragility of human life especially in glacial temperatures. Photograph (above) by Andrea Heinsohn for DAM. 

Yuima Nakazato's new haute couture collection Glacier drew on themes of human vulnerability, protection, and transformation. The Japanese designer combined delicate ceramic elements, sculptural tailoring, and sustainable materials to explore exposure and concealment. Inspired by a journey to the frozen landscapes of northern Finland, he reflected on the body’s dependence on clothing, not only for warmth and safety, but as a language of identity and resistance. The result was a thoughtful and visually arresting meditation on the origins of dress and its enduring relevance in an uncertain world. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photography by Andrea Heinsohn and Jay Zoo. 

The fluidity of sea-coloured

voluminous fabrics contrast

with fine, sleek tailoring.

Photograph: Jay Zoo

AMID a spartan space at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Japanese couturier Yuima Nakazato looked at the primal purpose of clothing. His Autumn-Winter 2025/26 haute couture collection peeled back the layers of fashion as ornamentation and luxury, confronting audiences with themes of exposure, survival, and resilience. Embedded in an exploration of the body’s vulnerability, both physical and emotional, Nakazato's work questioned how garments protect not just our skin, but our humanity. 

Through fractured ceramics, concealed faces, and the delicate force of hand-crafted forms, he presented a hauntingly beautiful vision of what it means to be fragile, and why that very fragility might be our greatest strength.

 “In the beginning of the collection, it is important for me to travel to get inspiration,” Nakazato said. “Travelling and feeling different environments, to see how people are living there and the relationship between nature and the human body.”

This season, the genesis of the collection lay not in the atelier but in the frozen wilderness of Finnish Lapland. There, in temperatures well below freezing, Nakazato collaborated with contemporary dancer and artist Evgeny Ganeev on a nude photoshoot. “I travelled to Northern Finland this time together with the dancer. He took off his clothing in this cold environment. Without protection, surviving is very difficult. So, taking off the garments lets people recognize how important garments are for the human body. That’s what I wanted to express.”

“At the beginning of a collection, it is important to travel, to get inspiration, feel different places, see how people live and the relationship between nature and the human body”

Nakazato's fragile, chainmail

armour made from ceramics. 

Photograph: Jay Zoo

The images of bare human skin exposed to the elements became both the emotional core and visual motif of the collection, enlarged and embedded in the tailored silhouettes shown on the runway. 

Long jackets and columnar gowns bearing giant photographic prints of Ganeev’s hands, positioned as an act of remembrance, a protective gesture against oblivion. Created with Nakazato’s signature precision, many of the designs were cut on diagonals or overlapping vest-like panels, suggestive of both deconstruction and protection.

But it was the "fragile armour" that carried Nakazato’s message most powerfully. A chain-mail-inspired dress clinked softly with every step, its metallic surface glinting like weathered silvery gold.

“It looks like metal armour,” Nakazato explained, “but actually it is made from ceramics. So, it is a very sensitive material, easy to break. You can’t fight using this, which is the whole point.”

In this layering of contradiction, hard and soft, protective and vulnerable, Nakazato offers a complex portrait of the human condition. Masks, too, became part of this armour. Ceramic face coverings concealed the identity of the wearer while revealing something deeper about the need for protection. “In a time of facial recognition and AI image generation, revealing one’s face is a form of deep vulnerability,” he said. For Nakazato, covering the face is not about hiding, but resisting. 

“In a time of facial recognition and AI image generation, revealing one’s face is a form of deep vulnerability” 

The designer's masks are not

about hiding, but resisting

the invasions of technology. 

Photograph: Jay Zoo

“Clothing is non-verbal communication,” he reflected. “But there are invisible messages and narratives behind the clothing. I believe in this power of the garment.” The hand-knitted metal chains crocheted with mohair were perhaps the most poetic embodiment of this concept. 

By combining the softness of yarn with the weight and rigidity of metal, Nakazato aligned traditional femininity with quiet rebellion. “So protective and unprotective is the meaning of this collection,” he said. “A conflation of opposite meanings.”

Sustainability remained at the heart of Nakazato’s vision. “It is not new,” he noted, “but we are continuously using the digital print dry fibre technology, upcycling with the Kenyan second-hand clothes. Three years ago I travelled to Kenya and brought the second-hand clothes back to Japan, and we are still using those materials.” 

He also continues to work with Spiber's Brewed Protein material: “The black and white parts of the garments all use brewed protein. Almost every look has that material.” 

The collection's hues ~ ghostly whites, glacial greys, and iridescent transparencies with dashes of brilliant sea greens and blues ~ were drawn from the Arctic terrain. Some fabrics rippled like river ice; others layered like gills or cracked porcelain. The silhouettes, skeletal, aquatic, alien, seemed not so much worn as grown. 

“It is very difficult to continue couture brands. But I believe in craftsmanship. This is not mass production. I think couture is not just for five or ten years, but forever"

Yuima Nakazato pours black ink 

over the white-enveloped dancer.

Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

As the show closed, Nakazato and Ganeev took to the runway beneath  ceramic bowls suspended above. One by one, the designer tipped ink from each bowl onto a white cloth draped over Ganeev’s body. 

As the ink spread, Ganeev twisted on the ground, embodying transformation through pain. He rose at last, trailing strips of now-stained cloth that mirrored the torn and floating elements of the garments.

“It is very difficult to continue couture brands,” Nakazato admitted. “But I believe in craftsmanship. This is not mass production. Hand crafting is very important. I think couture is not just for five or ten years, but forever. So, to continue is important.”

By revisiting the birth of clothing, when humanity first clothed itself against nature’s indifference, Nakazato has reframed couture as something vital. Not a luxury, but a language. Not a performance, but a plea. In confronting fragility so honestly, through ceramics that fracture, through masks that shield, through hands that knit, Yuima Nakazato reminds us that protection begins with the recognition of what we stand to lose. And that clothing, in its purest form, still carries the power to help us survive. 

Scroll down to see more highlights from Yuima Nakazato's collection by Andrea Heinsohn & Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph; Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter, 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Jay Zoo

Yuima Nakazato, Glacier, Autumn-Winter 2025/2026, Paris Haute Couture. Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Paris Haute Couture: Sea Change ~ Iris van Herpen's New Collection Tells a Tale of Couture, Creation and Connection

Iris van Herpen wanted to create coral-like forms from fire-flamed brass that is hand-made into diaphanous clouds that hover around model Andrea Gutierrez, Photograph (above) by Jay Zoo for DAM. 

Amid rising seas and vanishing reefs, Iris van Herpen’s Autumn/Winter 2025–26 couture collection Sympoiesis asks us to reconsider our place in nature, not as distant observers, but as part of a shared system. The Dutch designer transformed her runway creations into symbols of a living oceanic organism: delicate, intelligent, and interconnected, where algae illuminate dresses and textiles are like coral, fusing biodesign and marine science, the show was a sensory study about how we are all connected. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento and Andrea Heinsohn. Photographs by Jay Zoo 

Translucent organza in hues of

blue and green, like the ocean. 

Photograph: Jay Zoo 

THIS season in Paris, Iris van Herpen didn’t just present a couture collection, she mapped an entire fashion ecosystem. Called Sympoiesis, she unveiled her new work during Haute Couture Week, Autumn-Winter 2025/26, as a manifesto on the fragility of the ocean. 

Drawing on marine biology, biofabrication, movement, scent, and light, the Dutch designer transformed the runway into a thoughtful meditation on connectedness: between humans and nature, art and science, past and future. 

From a gown inhabited by millions of bioluminescent algae to kinetic wings that fluttered like underwater lifeforms, the collection asked what it means to design not just for the body, but with the world around it.

“The collection is a collaboration with nature itself,” van Herpen said. “In this time of ecological emergency and biodiversity loss, biodesign invites us to rethink the way we 'use' materials, to visualise a future where all human design is not just inspired by nature but integrated with it.

"It highlights the interdependence between humans and nature, viewing the body not as isolated, but as an ecosystem, where fashion becomes alive, responsive, and connected with the natural world.”

Drawing on marine biology, biofabrication, movement, scent, and light, the Dutch designer  wanted to evoke interdependence, between humans and nature, art and science

The immersive performance

created with lighting artist

Nick Verstand at the show

Photograph: Jay Zoo. 

The show opened with a performance in collaboration with Dutch light artist Nick Verstand. A dancer, dressed in a whisper-thin Japanese fabric, moved within a chamber of laser-projected light. Each gesture summoned organic, flowing shapes, like phosphorescence disturbed by a swimmer’s hand. 

The performance invoked the pioneering spirit of Loïe Fuller, whose late-19th-century experiments with fabric, light, and choreography paved the way for what van Herpen now renders through aerospace textiles and motion-triggered projection. 

“She seems to be in dialogue with the forces of nature in her performances,” said van Herpen. “In my eyes she was an alchemist of light  and textiles, with which she merged dance into sculpture.

“The dancer becomes morphogenic and more-than-human, seeming to shimmer in and out of perception, often being swallowed entirely into this bioluminescent creature,” she added. “The show opening is an emotionally charged performance on how we have drained the life out of our oceans. It is a call for protection."

Then came the most talked-about moment of the night: a model stepping out in the design incorporating the bioluminescent algae. The collaboration with biodesigner Chris Bellamy produced what is likely couture’s first living garment. The algae, pyrocystis lunula, emit light in response to movement. 

“The show opening is an emotionally charged performance on how we have drained the life out of our oceans. It is a call for protection."

The evocative, organic designs

created by van Herpen, are 

both elegant and futuristic.  

Photograph: Jay Zoo

Months of lab cultivation, using saltwater baths and circadian-light cycling, created a gel-based ecosystem for the microorganisms, which pulsed gently inside a translucent bodice. The design was housed off-runway in a climate-controlled biosphere designed to simulate oceanic conditions. This wasn’t a dress meant to be worn; it was meant to be cared for.

That distinction was crucial.Van Herpen isn’t proposing living fashion as novelty. Instead, the algae look raises questions about mutual dependency, fragility, and what it might mean to cultivate garments as ecosystems, ones that breathe, grow, and respond.

The designer has long worked at the intersection of natural systems and scientific inquiry. But Sympoiesis deepened that engagement through its conceptual grounding in James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which views the Earth’s biosphere as a single, self-regulating organism. 

The ocean, in this theory, is not a backdrop or even a resource, but a vital, co-creative force. “We can’t view nature as something separate from us,” van Herpen said. “We’re entangled, biologically, materially, emotionally.” This ethos emerged through form and material. One standout look, created with kinetic artist Casey Curran, featured delicate wings made from golden coil filaments that rippled in slow, synchronized movements, like the pulsing of jellyfish or the respiration of coral. The design was based on microscopic imaging of bioluminescent plankton.

“In this time of ecological emergency, biodesign invites us to rethink the way we 'use' materials, to visualise a future where human design is not just inspired by nature but integrated with it"

The sinuous gown created from

Spiber's Brewed Protein was a

highlight of the show in Paris.

Photograph; Jay Zoo

Van Herpen’s signature mix of cutting-edge materials and fluid shapes continued throughout the collection. Carbon fibre boning mimicked moon jellies and sonar waves. Silk, draped over wave-shaped casts and coated with resin, became suspended breakers. In another look, Brewed Protein, a plant-based biomaterial developed by Japanese biotech company Spiber, was laser-cut and bonded to sheer organza to create coral-like forms.

Perhaps the most compelling example of Sympoiesis' fusion of design and material innovation came in one of the collection’s two bridal looks, also made with Spiber. Their fibre is a lab-engineered material based on proteins found in spider silk and cashmere but produced through microbial fermentation. 

"Biomimicry is always present in Spiber's approach, and that's really similar to our methodology," explained van Herpen. "Fusing biology with innovation, recreating the way nature makes a material, starting from a protein. They were able to translate a complex technology to meet the needs of designers and create something truly wearable, which is a rare quality."

The wedding gown combined sheer organza and the Spiber protein, laser-cut into hundreds of crescent shapes, then dyed in shades of soft coral and ivory. The panels were heat-sealed to create a shimmering exoskeleton, while illusion tulle carried delicate coral-like embellishments that spiraled into a weightless train “The fabric floats on the skin like it’s alive,” Van Herpen said. “It has a softness and lightness that can’t be replicated.”

Each of the show’s eighteen looks engaged with the ocean thematically and structurally. Spiber's Brewed Protein appeared again in translucent constructions, while handcrafted shoes made in collaboration with Rombaut featured cascading metal halos that echoed sonar rings.

"'Ocean' by David Attenborough by reminded me that the future isn’t only about fear. It’s about potential. Healing is possible" 

The subtle hues of peach and

plum were created from

gradient-dyed fabrics.

Photograph: Andrea Heinsohn

Gradient-dyed gowns transitioned from peach hues to a darker plum. “The silhouettes dissolve in motion, as if painted by currents beneath the surface,” said van Herpen. In the gravity-defying Noosphere look, painterly shades of green and blue washed across featherlight carbon fibre panels, forming a silhouette like a drifting sea creature.

A bespoke fragrance by Francis Kurkdjian added another sensory dimension to the experience. Diffused as each model stepped onto the runway, the scent evoked driftwood, mineral salt, and bioluminescence.

“Perfume is an invisible wave, a breath of the soul that may prolong the movement of a garment,” said Kurkdjian. “For Iris van Herpen, I wanted an olfactory score that extends the poetry of her silhouettes, a fragrance like a full immersion: deep, aquatic, familiar yet almost unreal, surreal."

Van Herpen credits the documentary Ocean by David Attenborough with influencing the emotional architecture of the collection. The film’s emphasis on both ecological destruction and nature’s capacity for recovery resonated.

“It reminded me that the future isn’t only about fear,” van Herpen said. “It’s about potential. Healing is possible." That optimism infuses the Sympoiesis collection. The title itself, meaning "making-with," captures a new mode of design, one that operates not in dominion over nature, but in dialogue with it.

In a Paris couture week already full of spectacle and celebrity, vân Herpen’s show offered something else: a rare invitation to slow down and engage on a deeper level. Here, couture was not just image-making but exploring a different future. And in Sympoiesis, the designer shows us that the world we build next depends on how we choose to relate ~ to other living beings, to the environment, including our oceans, and to each other.