THElight as air, reminiscent of ski acrobatics. Eileen Gu stunned with a one-of-a-kind outfit at the 2026 Met Gala. The Chinese-American acrobatic skiing champion, fresh from one gold and two silvers at Milano Cortina 2026, crossed the red carpet as if she were floating, surrounded by bubbles of light that detached from the dress and vanished into the air.
Fifteen thousand glass spheres, Eileen Gu’s look
It wasn’t a stage effect: it was same dress as Eileen Gu to produce the bubblesgoverned by microprocessors hidden in the structure and calibrated to release pressurized gas in sequence, in real time, completely autonomously. THE’Airo Dress, this is his namewas born from collaboration between Iris van Herpenthe Dutch fashion house that for years has been pushing haute couture towards territories that traditional fashion has never explored, and the artistic duo AAMurakami, composed of Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groveswith studios in Tokyo and London, known for sensorial installations that investigate the boundary between body, light and nature.
Eileen Gu in the Airo Dress at the 2026 Met Gala. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images)
The surface of the dress is entirely constructed with fifteen thousand hand-crafted iridescent glass spheres, fixed with a technique that uses ultraviolet light: each sphere captures and returns light in a different way, and the wide skirt that opens downwards creates a silhouette that seems both ancient and completely new at the same time.
Where did the inspiration for the bubble-shooting dress come from?
The starting idea was not aesthetic but physical: the The human body is 99.9% empty space at the atomic level. It is this truth, dizzying if you pause, that is the conceptual center of the dress, developed in dialogue with the exhibition Costume Art of the Costume Institute, which this year examines human anatomy and its links to clothing. The iridescent spheres, the bubbles that are released, the matter that seems to have no weight: everything converges in the idea of a body that is almost nothing, yet occupies a specific space in the world. The fact that an Olympic acrobatic skiing champion is wearing it adds a dimension that the project alone would not have.
A detail of Eileen Gu’s dress. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Penske Media via Getty Images)
The wide skirt that opens downwards like a shell, the body that emerges from a cloud of light material: the I refer to Birth of Venus by Botticelli is explicit but not didacticfiltered through a contemporary aesthetic that transforms the body into a narrative device
Minimal by choice
At the feet, Completely transparent PVC mules with sculptural heelsa detail that communicates with the lightness of the whole without competing with it. THE semi-collected hair with soft waves that frame the face bring a Renaissance echo translated into a contemporary key, with more definition and less idealization. Nothing overall weighs down the silhouette: everything is designed not to disturb that iridescent cloud of glass and light that moves, breathes and blows bubbles in the air of the Met.
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