A biodesigner and engineer fascinated by how we can live more symbiotically through interspecies and intercultural collaboration.
In collaboration with iris Van Herpen for her 2025 Haute Couture collection Sympoiesis, the opening ‘Living Look’ was a first-of-its-kind vision. Inhabited by 125 million bioluminescent algae that emit light in response to movement.
The living system cultivated in seawater and encapsulated in a specialised nutrient gel. A translucent protective coating allows light and air to pass through.
Rather than constructed, the dress is nurtured. Its circadian rhythm and environment are carefully tuned to its marine origin, transforming fashion into an act of care.
July 2025
Press Kit
Collaborators:
- Iris Van Herpen
- University of Amsterdam
Press:
- Vogue: A Dress Made From 125 Million Bioluminescent Algae
- New York Times: This Dress Is Alive. Really.
In this pioneering collaboration, the duo unveiled a first-of-its-kind “living look” - a couture garment inhabited by 125 million bioluminescent algae that emit light in response to movement and touch.
Grown in seawater baths over several months before being encapsulated in a specialised nutrient gel, the bioluminescent Pyrocystis Lunula algae - named for their moon-like shape - were moulded into a protective membrane. They were then attentively cared for under conditions that mimicked their natural marine habitat, with humidity, temperature, and circadian rhythms all tuned to their precise needs.
The chamber nurturing this living look becomes a microcosm of the ocean’s delicate balance. Caring for the garment requires a symbiotic relationship and redefines traditional creation processes entirely, as the garment is cultivated rather than constructed.
During the performance, the living look emerged while a biosphere light portal designed by Nick Verstand bloomed around it. As beams of light responded to the model’s movements, technology and nature became one.
In February 2025, Iris van Herpen approached Bellamy to propose this collaboration. Over the ensuing four months, Bellamy developed a bespoke 35-step biofabrication technique to encapsulate the bioluminescent microalgae in a way that allows them to live in a terrestrial, human environment.
This first-of-its-kind living material is expected to keep the algae alive for several months, if not years, and its growth will continue to be monitored. Stella Maxwell wore the living look on the runway, and was dressed in darkness or under red light so as not to disrupt the algae’s circadian rhythm. In the weeks leading up to the event, the microorganisms’ internal clocks were tuned to ensure they would glow brightly at 12 noon - a time when they would not typically illuminate in nature.
The algae’s bioluminescence is a natural defense mechanism. When these single-celled organisms experience mechanical disturbance they emit a flash of blue light. This response, often called the “burglar alarm” mechanism, serves as an alarm signal and can attract secondary predators that prey on the algae’s attackers.
This living look represents an evolution of Bellamy’s research into “livingness” and its potential as both a materiality and a design philosophy. Through his biodesign studio ‘Bio Crafted’, Bellamy undertakes interspecies and intercultural collaborations with indigenous communities, designers, and scientists - most recently on a remote island archipelago in French Polynesia for his research project Lucid Life | Marama Ora.
Bellamy notes that humans have worked symbiotically with living organisms for thousands of years - from the living root bridges of Asia to the humble British hedgerow. Such living structures adapt, react, repair, and respond to their surroundings, defying the degradation that conventional man-made materials experience.
Bellamy believes that the ephemeral, fragile nature of life is precisely what makes it so resilient, and he hopes to bring this philosophy into our material world. Bellamy’s work bridges science, the arts, and traditional knowledge, transforming our relationship with materials and the natural world. He left a 15-year engineering career to work with living systems in an artistic, interdisciplinary way. During that time he developed electric vehicles and recyclable shoes; however, he realized that incremental improvements to plastics and metals would never suffice to meet the United Nations’ climate target of halving emissions by 2030. He also observed that many sustainability projects failed due to the emotional, irrational, and inherently human aspects of design.
He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, and become chartered as an engineer, before transitioning to study biodesign at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. Now, as a biodesigner, he is devoted to exploring living materials with artistic practice - a combination he believes holds the potential to address some of our planet’s crises.
As part of this collaboration, Bellamy undertook an artists residency at the University of Amsterdam’s Institute of Physics, where the living material was grown and the technique refined with the support of biophysics researchers Nico Schramma and Mazi Jalaal.
The living bioluminescent garment is being developed as a collaboration between Iris Van Herpen and Bio Crafted, the studio of biodesigner Christopher Bellamy. His ongoing research project “Lucid Life” explores livingness as a materiality and a design philosophy through intercultural and interspecies collaborations with scientists, artists, indigenous communities, and other species. Living materials’ ability to grow, adapt, react and heal has been used symbiotically by humans for thousands of years, from root bridges in Asia, to the humble European hedgerow. However, they are now replaced by the more reliable and repeatable inert materials which dominate our day to day lives. The garment is being created from a contemporary living material inspired by corals’ symbiotic relationship with micro-algae. A similar species, which are bioluminescent, is encapsulated within protective membranes, which permit them to live for many months, while being transformed into useable and wearable forms. The bioluminescent algae emit light in response to touch and movement during the night. This highly efficient “cold” light production has fascinated humans for thousands of years. The process evolved as a defence mechanism to distract predators, and is achieved through an enzymatic chemical process, which the cell recharges during daylight hours. The creation of the material takes several months to grow the micro-algae, and the encapsulation technique requires more than 20 different processes, which have been developed specifically to achieve the design vision for this garment with the support of the University of Amsterdam Fluid Lab, and the Francis Crick Institute for Biomedical Discovery. The bioluminescent micro-algae, Pyrocystis Lunula have the distinctive shape of an eclipse moon. They are grown in seawater baths, with lighting to replicates what they would experience 50-150m deep in the ocean, where they would normally reside. The light is inverted from a normal daylight cycle, so that they are “awake:” during the night, and illuminate during the day, so that they will illuminate on the runway. The algae are first encapsulated in a structural nutrient gel, and then transferred to a final tool, in which they are moulded into the desired shape inside several layers of a protective coating. The protective coating transmits light and air to the algae inside, while keeping them safe from dehydration, or contamination from other micro-organisms. Remember those pods humans are grown in in the film The Matrix. Its just like that – but for algae, and hopefully less dystopian. The finished material and garment is then stored in conditions to make them feel like home. They happen to be conditions which are great for us humans too. Care is taken to achieve the correct brightness, circadian rhythm, and temperature, which must stay within 16-24 degrees Celsius, just like they experience in the ocean. The finished garment is a living system. It requires regular care to keep the algae healthy—ensuring they receive light, stay within optimal temperature ranges, and maintain a circadian rhythm. These maintenance needs closely resemble those of humans and have shaped the way the project team works with the material. Caring for the garment, and for the 125 million micro-algae it contains, reframes how we think about materials and clothing—not as static objects, but as things that require attention, interaction, and responsibility.