At Paris Couture Week, within the gilded walls of Élysée Montmartre, Iris van Herpen didn’t just present a fashion collection — she summoned a living, breathing world into existence. With only 18 looks, her Fall/Winter 2025–26 Haute Couture show transcended fabric and form, offering an immersive meditation on biology, technology, and the poetry of life itself.

The show’s core was a marvel both scientific and spiritual: a bioluminescent dress pulsing softly with 125 million living algae. Neither merely a garment nor installation, it existed in fragile equilibrium — reacting to light, temperature, and human touch. Displayed inside a climate-controlled glass chamber, the piece was as much a living relic as it was a challenge to our definitions of couture. Created with bio-designer Chris Bellamy, the algae dress became a profound metaphor — not of dominance over nature, but of coexistence.

Every look that followed felt like a stanza in a larger poem, a whisper of nature’s intelligence rendered into physical form. A skeletal kinetic dress, developed with artist Casey Curran, moved with uncanny grace — its spindly limbs trembling as though animated by breath. Another floated midair, crafted from a featherweight Japanese “air” textile, barely tethered and gently stirred by the ambient air, like a garment in zero gravity.

Van Herpen’s exploration of material was nothing short of revolutionary. Biofabricated “brewed protein” textiles, designed in partnership with Spiber, took on the textures of marine life — one gown rippling like the skin of a cephalopod, evoking alien beauty while remaining utterly grounded in sustainable innovation.

And then came the vortex gown — a stiff, spiraling sculpture that seemed to levitate off the body, suspended in a whirling architecture of form and force. In contrast, dresses crafted to mimic water’s surface tension glided through the air, catching light like gossamer jellyfish adrift in the deep sea. These weren’t just clothes — they were environments.

The show opened with movement: a dancer adorned in wing-like pleats performed amidst laser beams choreographed by artist Nick Verstand, in tribute to Loïe Fuller’s early explorations of dance and light. The result was an ethereal performance art piece, underscoring the collection’s reverence for fluidity, transformation, and fragility.

To complete this fully sensorial experience, a custom fragrance by Francis Kurkdjian filled the space with an oceanic cadence — a scent that moved like a tide, binding the physical and ephemeral into a single breath.

Ultimately, Van Herpen offered far more than couture. She offered an ecosystem — one that floated between biology and myth, fashion and future. Her collection did not parade down the runway; it murmured, glowed, and evolved, asking us to consider the fragility of life and the urgency of interconnection.

In a season often defined by spectacle, Van Herpen reminded us that true awe is quiet, symbiotic, and deeply felt. FW25–26 was couture as consciousness — a bioluminescent whisper in a darkening world, glowing with the radical beauty of what is possible when we choose to create with life, rather than in spite of it.