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High-fashion model Stella Maxwell got dressed for Iris van Herpens most recent haute couture show in the dark. Around her, flashes of ultra-dim red lightdesigned to maintain the illusion of nightwere the only respite that allowed stylists to slip her into the shows opening gown. As the stylists worked to fasten the garment around Maxwell, it became the rooms source of illumination. Every small bit of pressure applied to the fabric caused it to glow an otherworldly blue. Thats because Maxwell’s dress was made of living, touch-activated, bioluminescent organisms. The gown was revealed on July 7 as the debut look of Sympoiesis, Van Herpens Autumn/Winter 2025-2026 show at Paris Fashion Week. Crafted in collaboration with biodesigner Chris Bellamy, who runs his own studio called Bio Crafted, the dress is made of 125 million Pyrocystis lunula, a form of microalgae that evolved to emit light when touched. [Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted] Fashion designers often talk about bringing a look to life, but in this case, Van Herpen requested that Bellamy quite literally design a living dress. While the Dutch designer has experimented broadly with material science and sustainable fashion in the pastbuilding 3D-printed shoes, fabric made from trash, and gowns crafted from ocean plasticthis is the first time she’s sent living organisms out onto the runway. To make it happen, Bellamy was tasked with not only shepherding millions of microalgae through their early life cycle in just two months, but also finding a way to keep them alive on a moving garment. He says that involved reviving the dress just days before the show. The quest for biological dark matter Bellamy, who started his career in engineering, says hes always had an interest in working on the cutting edge of sustainability. He helped develop Jaguar Land Rovers first-ever electric vehicle, the Jaguar I-Pace, and later tried his hand in the footwear industry by designing recyclable shoes for the brand Salomon. During those early years, though, Bellamy came to feel that his projects were either reliant on materials that ultimately werent sustainable enough to make a major difference, or on humans to dispose of them correctly (case in point, he says, is that most customers didnt actually recycle the recyclable shoes). Ultimately, these frustrations led him to abandon his early career and follow the less-charted path of biodesign. At Bio Crafted, Bellamy focuses on finding new ways to incorporate living materials into everyday life and products. That goal introduced him to a field called bioprospecting, which involves searching for as-yet-undiscovered microorganisms and learning their unique properties. They say that for every one organism we know, there are 100,000 that we don’t know, Bellamy says. That 100,000 is termed biological dark matter, and in that there might be new cancer treatments, there might be new vaccines, there might be things that we can’t even possibly imagine. [Photo: courtesy Bio Crafted] In 2023, Bellamys quest for this biological dark matter led him to the French Polynesian island of Moorea. There, he collaborated with artist and researcher Tokainiua Jean-Daniel Devatine and cultural educator Tekoui Jérémie Tamari on a project called Lucid Life, which used existing Indigenous science to create a collection of living objects out of two local strains of bioluminescent algae. In their natural deep ocean habitats, these microorganisms evolved an energy-efficient way to scare off predators. Whenever pressure is applied to the algaeby, say, a small fishthe algae activate a chemical reaction to emit light. Their bioluminscence is designed not to scare that small fish away but to attract an even bigger secondary predator to intimidate the first. For 18 months, Bellamy worked on finding a way to incorporate these glowing microorganisms into a garment. Because the algae rely on photosynthesis for energy (and operate on a circadian rhythm similar to that of a humans), he needed a process that would protect the algae while still allowing light to reach them. After continuous trial and error, he found a solution: By suspending the algae in a nutrient gel and encapsulating the mixture in a transparent membrane, he could prevent any bacteria or oil from disrupting the algae and still preserve its photosynthetic properties. The final producta glowing blue textile fashioned into a swimsuitis what first caught Van Herpens eye. Iris read my research around livingness, and the title of her collection was Sympoiesis, which is this wonderful concept about the interconnectedness of nature, Bellamy says. For her, this was a really tangible exression of the whole theme of sympoiesis. Initially, when we met, I said, Okay, I can make a small piece of material. And Iris said, Let’s make a whole dress. [Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted] A race against the clock The prospect of harvesting enough algae to create an entire dress was already daunting. Then, Van Herpen sent Bellamy her concept sketch. Unlike the flat textile that Bellamy had developed for Lucid Life, Van Herpens haute couture idea involved a complex pattern of raised ridges and swirls, each sewn onto a transparent panel to give the illusion that they were rising from the models own skin. I presented Iris with a rule book saying, these are the constraints for the design, and you want to work within these parameters. And she sent back her vision for the garment, and it looked absolutely nothing like the rules I proposed, Bellamy says. So we actually ended up developing a completely bespoke biotechnology process to make Iriss design feasible. Bellamy had just two months to figure out a new way to encapsulate the algae before he had to hand over the materials to Van Herpens atelier. Bellamy and Van Herpens team constructed an entire dedicated algae farm at the University of Amsterdam, where he created hundreds and hundreds of prototypes. Bellamy moved to the city to monitor the farm, testing countless new combinations of nutrient gels and membrane materials in a race against the clock. The apartment I was living in had samples everywhere. For two months, I was setting my alarm every couple of hours in the night to wake and make sure a new part of the process happened, he says. It was exhaustingI dont even think Iris knows this, but the first material sample that properly worked happened the night before the deadline to make all the materials. [Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted] 125 million microalgae face a near-death experience The day after the breakthrough, Bellamy worked frantically to turn 125 million microalgae into a workable material for the designers at Van Herpens atelier. When it was finally ready, the next challenge began: keeping the algae alive until the show. Bellamy says the microalgae are fairly resilient. However, temperature extremes can kill them, and Van Herpens designers were working in a studio without air-conditioning in the midst of a heat wave nearing 100-degree temperatures. To prevent heat-induced algae death, Bellamy commissioned a custom climatic chamber to store the dress when it wasnt being actively sewn. The chamber (which vaguely resembles a prop one might find on the set of Star Wars) was designed to maintain optimal temperatures and humidity, as well as to mimic the effect of the sun. [Photo: courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted] After five weeks, the sewing and fitting processes were complete. The dress was packed into the climatic chamber, loaded onto a refrigerated truck, and driven from Amsterdam to Paris for fashion week. There, just six days before the show, the unthinkable happened: Another heat wave rolled in. As Van Herpens team started making the final tweaks on the gown, they noticed that its front bust panel was no longer glowing. I got a call, and it was like, The garment got really hot, and it’s not lighting up anymore, Bellamy says, noting that he got on the next plane to Amsterdam and restarted the farm. We got everything going, and worked through the night for a few nights to try and create this huge volume of material. We ended up having to book four seats on a bus, and we had an overnight bus to Paris to be able to get the material there on time, he says. A few designers worked through the night again, and the team managed to then rebuild the garment just on time. [Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted] A living process In the final days before the fashion show, the dresss circadian rhythm had to be prepped to ensure it would light up at a midday showing. Bellamy artificially altered its day-night cycle by turning the climatic chambers light off during the day and back on at nightmeaning that just before Maxwell walked in the show, she had to be dressed in a backstage blackout tent. When Maxwell finally took to the runway, the lights in the room were fully dimmed. The audience could see in intricate detil as the tapping of her fingers over the garment illuminated individual panels. Her first steps into the space looked almost like the dress was moving of its own accord; floating through the air like an ethereal blue hologram. [Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted] Now that the show is complete, Bellamy says hes not sure how long the dress will live. In the meantime, he hopes it can help people rethink their relationship with materials and nature. Everyone who’s been involved in this project in the atelier has undergone a really profound change, because as theyve been making this garment, theyve had to care for it at the same time, Bellamy says. We built this language where we say, Oh, they’re grumpy, or Oh, they’re happy. And some people might say, You can’t anthropomorphize an organism! But equally, it’s necessary to give it emotions; it’s necessary to communicate with it to be able to really understand it. For me, the message is about trying to change that relationship to materials and nature. The team here in the atelier will be absolutely devastated if this garment dies because they’ve cared for it and nurtured it.
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As the federal government pulls back funding for sustainability, most large American companies are continuing to invest in climate and other environmental, social, and governance (ESG) work. In some cases, theyre investing more than they did in the past. But nearly a third say theyre now talking about it less. In a survey of 400 executives at U.S. companies with $1 billion-plus in revenue, conducted by the sustainability ratings platform EcoVadis, 87% said theyve maintained or increased investment in sustainability this year. At the same time, 31% said theyre reducing ESG communicationin other words, “greenhushing,” or not taking credit for their progress on environmental or social issues. Some 8% of the surveyed executives said theyve stopped talking about sustainability completely. That tracks with what sustainability leaders are saying in private, says Richard Eyram, chief customer officer at EcoVadis. Some organizations that have had sustainability ingrained in their ethos for decades arent holding back [on the work], but they do say that they likely wont publish a sustainability report this year, he says. Or theyve taken things off of their website because they just dont want to be in the line of fire, so to speak, with anything politicizing sustainability. That ranges from talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to environmental programs. Some large companies are also starting to talk about sustainability differently internally. I do know of one client who they actually changed their job titles in their department, from climate to energy utilization or energy efficiency or something like that, Eyram says. This is a multibillion-dollar U.S. organization, he adds. What we’re seeing holistically is less discussion of climate and more on supply chain, risk resiliency, brand risk. The investments continuing. The same content is underpinning it, but it’s absolutely that the narrative has changed slightly. Anecdotally, Eyram says, some smaller companies are pulling back from sustainability goals because they now face less regulatory pressure. But for most of the largest corporations, there’s still a commitment to the work, whether or not they’re willing to talk about it. The majority of executives surveyed said they saw supply chain sustainability as a competitive advantage. And sustainability teams at large companies still care about climate progress. As Eyram attests, That motivation hasn’t changed one iota.
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E-Commerce
Shares in MP Materials Corp., a rare earth materials company, are surging in premarket trading on Tuesday for the second time in recent days. Last week, the stock price (NYSE: MP) skyrocketed after the United States Department of Defense (DOD) agreed to buy $400 million worth of the companys newly created preferred stock. And this week, MP Materials is on the rise againbut not because of any Pentagon agreement. Instead, tech giant Apple appears to be causing MP shares to rise. Heres what you need to know. What is MP Materials? MP Materials Corp. is the name of the company that operates the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility in the Clarke Mountain Range in southeast California. That mine is located just about 50 miles south of Las Vegas, Nevada, where MP Materials is based. The company was formed in 2017 in order to acquire the Mountain Pass mine and restarted mining operations at the site in the same year. The company says it began selling its first rare earths product, a concentrate of rare earths, in 2018. MP Materials went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020, and two years later, it started construction on a fully integrated metal and magnet manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Production of the magnets, which are critical components in everything from drones to smartphones to advanced military weapons, as well as virtually all other advanced electronic devices, began in 2024. What are rare earths? Rare earths are a group of 17 materials that are now critical to the production of advanced electronics, particularly the magnets used in them. The name rare earths is a bit misleading, because most of the 17 elements are actually pretty plentiful in the earth, according ot the U.S. Geological Survey, which states that all are relatively abundant. The problem with rare earths, as noted by Live Science, is that they are difficult to extract from the earth. The materials usually need to go through a cumbersome processing in order to extract their purest form. Why are rare earth materials important? Rare earths are now critical in our digital world, since they are required to make so many advanced electronicseverything from batteries to smartphones to guided missile systems. Their importance in defence manufacturing is why governments worldwide have increasingly placed emphasis on bolstering their rare earth supply chains. China is currently the largest producer of rare earth materials. The reason MP Materials has become so important as of late is because its Mountain Pass is the second largest rare earths mine in the worldand the only one operational inside the United States. How is Apple involved with MP Materials? MP Materials Corps stock price got a huge boost last week when the DOD agreed to buy $400 million of the companys newly created preferred stock, which will help MP Materials construct a second magnet-producing facility. But as stated, rare earths are critical not just for defense but for electronics such as smartphones. So it’s no surprise that a company like Apple, make of the iPhone, is interested in acquiring rare earths. As reported by Fox Business, Apple is soon expected to announce a $500 million commitment to MP Materials. The deal would see Apple purchase American-made rare-earth magnets from MP Materials. It will also see the construction of a new recycling facility near the mine that will reprocess materials from already-used electronics. These recycled materials will then be used in future Apple products. Fox Business also reports that Apple and MP Materials will open a second magnet factory in Fort Worth, Texas. Apple has yet to officially announce the deal, but a senior White House official told Fox News Digital that “Apple deserves a lot of credit for stepping up, referring to the Trump Administration’s efforts to bolster U.S. rare earth production. Fast Company reached out to Apple for comment. How is MP Materials stock price performing? After the MP Materials-DOD announcement last week, MP Materials stock price skyrocketed 50%. And today, after the news broke that Apple is expected to make a half-billion dollar commitment to the company, MP shares are up again. As of the time of this writing, MP shares are currently up over 8% in premarket trading to $52.46 per share. Year to date, as of yesterdays closing price, MP shares are up 211%. And since the company went public in 2020, shares have surged more than 390%.
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