Olympic skier Eileen Gu turned heads on the 2026 Met Gala red carpet with a diaphanous gown made of 15,000 iridescent glass bubbles. The Airo dress, designed by Iris van Herpen with artists A.A.Murakami, released real bubbles as she walked. The look embodied the event's 'Fashion Is Art' theme through scientific and surreal concepts.
The 2026 Met Gala took place on the evening of Monday, May 4, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, drawing celebrities under the dress code 'Fashion Is Art.' Chinese American freestyle skier Eileen Gu arrived in a groundbreaking gown crafted by Dutch designer Iris van Herpen in collaboration with artistic duo Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves of A.A.Murakami. The dress featured 15,000 hand-formed, individually bonded iridescent glass bubbles over a hidden system of microprocessors, bubble nozzles, air pumps, and a portable power source that released two to five actual bubbles per second as Gu walked the carpet, creating a whimsical effect. It took 15 weeks of development and 2,550 hours of work from specialists in couture, science, engineering, and computational design to complete the piece, which van Herpen described as one of her most challenging creations. “It looks so seamless and effortless, but inside is an impressive construction,” van Herpen told Vogue. “This look required a very diverse team of specialists.” Gu called it a masterpiece that spoke to her through themes of motion, stillness, and redefining boundaries. “It was a great honor to be entrusted by Iris to introduce this masterpiece to the world,” she said. “For me, as a freeski athlete, these elements are inextricable from one another, and so this dress is the purest distillation of my art.” Van Herpen drew inspiration from scientific theories on life's origins in vesicles and the atomic emptiness of the human body, aiming to reflect both realism and surrealism while honoring Gu's athletic grace. “The dress expresses the weightlessness of Eileen [and] her athletic skills,” van Herpen said. The design challenged traditional views of the body, fitting the event co-chaired by Venus Williams alongside Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Anna Wintour.
