Created for the Met Gala’s 2026 theme, ‘Fashion Is Art’, Iris van Herpen collaborated with A.A. Murakami on ‘The Airo’ Dress for the celebrated Olympian Eileen Gu, echoing her airborne grace on the slopes. Emerged through 15 weeks of experimentation, couture craftsmanship, and computational engineering, the dress dissolves and re-forms with every movement, expressing the body as fluid, transient, and in constant transformation.
Inside the atelier, 15,000 hand-formed iridescent glass bubbles were individually bonded into place with UV light, while hidden microprocessors and pneumatic systems were carefully installed to choreograph the release of floating bubbles into the air.
In response to the Met Gala’s theme, the atomic anatomy of the human body – composed of 99.9% empty space – is evoked through floating iridescent bubbles that dissolve the boundaries between physicality, matter, and atmosphere.
Each bubble is created from a balanced mixture of helium and air, engineered to create a surreal upward movement. The technology enables the organic, fluid movement from dress to atmosphere, each bubble surrendered to air, gravity, and hydrodynamics alone.
