Arriving in Iceland is always a bracing reminder of the power of Mother Nature. But going straight from the plane to Björk’s museum exhibit, followed by a geothermal dip at Sky Lagoon, and then onto the nearby festival that attracted fans (and fashion designers) from near and far to dance under a midnight sun was another experience altogether.
On Wednesday, at Víðistaðatún, a sculpture park in Hafnarfjörður just outside Reykjavík, thousands gathered for Echolalia, a one-day festival timed to one of nature’s rarest spectacles—and the first total solar eclipse visible from Iceland since 1954.
There are few artists for whom a total solar eclipse would be seen not as an astronomical event, but as a creative brief. So when the moon passed directly between the Earth and the sun over Iceland on August 12, Björk did what Björk does : She threw a rave, and wore one of her most memorable looks since the swan dress. (A bold statement, we know.)
As wind and rain swirled and the speakers boomed, Björk and longtime collaborator Arca took to the decks for trippy sets spanning deconstructed global club music, Latin rhythms, samba and reggaeton given the industrial treatment, with flashes of baroque and experimental electronics. There were appearances from Icelandic artists Ronja Jóhannsdóttir and electronic trio Sideproject, while the occasion also celebrated 40 years of Smekkleysa (or Bad Taste), the defiantly independent Reykjavík collective and record label entwined with Björk’s earliest works.
Amongst Björk’s fervent fans, we spotted Alexander McQueen’s creative director Seán McGirr, Loewe co-designer Jack McCollough (in town for his birthday), jeweler Marco Panconesi, and journalist Ronan Farrow taking in this sensory overload of the highest order : fashion, music, art and technology all competing for attention beneath a rapidly disappearing sun.
While the solar phenomenon may have been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, Björk has been consistently turning out phenomenal looks for four decades now, notes Pari Stave, curator of the Björk exhibition currently occupying the National Gallery of Iceland until September. “Transforming the body is part of her creative exploration through worldbuilding,” she told Vogue ahead of the rave.
On Wednesday, that worldbuilding was (quite literally) bigger than ever. Björk performed in a customized version of Robert Wun’s amorphous balloon couture creation, adapted from the Hong Kong-born, London-based designer’s fall 2026 collection, and shown in Paris just weeks earlier. Wun says Björk and her team zeroed in on the look immediately. “They weren’t even considering anything else,” he recalls. “It was just : It’s going to have to be this one.”
Another quality made the outfit unusually appropriate for an eclipse : its impermanence. “The beautiful aspect of it is that it’s not meant to last,” Wun says. And in a country where the tempestuous weather has little interest in accommodating fashion, perfection was never the objective. Björk’s camp, Wun recalls, embraced the possibility that balloons might burst mid-set : “Even if some of them pop, it’s part of the performance.”
Enter his expert British helium artisans, London Balloon Company’s Leila Holmes and The Balloon Stylist London’s Fiona Eagle, who flew into Reykjavik days before to build the look. Together, they estimate they used nearly 700 white balloons of various sizes blown up to near translucency (sourced from a specialist in Italy, no less) to further customize it to Björk’s needs as rave ringleader.
The work was not without risk. The duo mentioned backstage to Vogue that moments before Björk took to the stage, a balloon did burst. But they quickly blew up a new one and affixed it as the sky fell to mid-eclipse darkness, while Björk encouraged them with seconds to spare. Talk about the show must go on. Or as they say in Icelandic, “Þetta Reddast !” (Don’t we all need a national mantra that translates as, “It will all work out ?”)
Björk’s longtime stylist, Edda Gudmundsdottir, was less amused. “Who would have thought balloons could be such temperamental divas ?” she said the next morning, admitting she now felt like a deflated balloon herself. But it was all worth it in the end. The stylist says she personally envisioned “the sense of wonder you feel when you look up at the clouds and let your imagination wander. Robert’s balloons brought this incredible sense of fantasy and celebration to the moment.”
Indeed, as Björk bounced around on stage, resembling a high fashion ode to the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the playfulness and joy of her ensemble sent the crowd into a frenzy. For Wun, the absurdity of elevating the humble party balloon to haute couture was precisely the point. “Everything can turn into craft, as long as you take it seriously,” he says. “Instead of embroidery or beautiful tweed, it could be rubber and balloons.”
The symbolism was difficult to miss. Total solar eclipses have inspired awe, fear, and myth-making across civilizations precisely because they disrupt something we experience as immutable : daylight. The familiar suddenly becomes alien. Shadows sharpen, temperatures drop, the horizon changes, and the sun appears to vanish before returning. Here in Iceland, the land of the midnight sun, the effect transformed this rain-soaked community into a sort of coven, complete with shocking pink protective eyewear by Port Tanger.
Transformation, of course, is also the lingua franca of Björk’s creative universe. Across town at the National Gallery of Iceland, Echolalia makes that process physical. One of the four galleries belongs to another member of Björk’s merry band of creative co-conspirators : James T. Merry. His accompanying Metamorphlings (on till October 18) brings together more than 80 works spanning embroidery, metalwork, jewelry, 3D printing and the fantastical masks he has created for Björk over more than a decade.
Merry resists drawing neat boundaries around where Björk’s ideas end and his begin. “Björk has such strong conceptual and visual impulses, particularly in building the worlds and characters around her albums,” he says. “It becomes more like a shared trajectory orbiting around something, rather than a straight line.”
“Everything comes from Björk,” says Gudmundsdottir, who is careful to stipulate her role is to help realize the artist’s vision rather than merely adorn her. “She thoughtfully connects music, fashion and visuals to create a universe that is diverse, yet all in harmony. Every performance look has to relate to the story she is telling musically.”
There is a lovely full-circle quality to Wun’s participation, too. His earliest memories of Björk are inseparable from Alexander McQueen, whose collaborations with the musician helped demonstrate to a young Wun how potent the relationship between fashion and music could become. “What she created with McQueen is also what got me into fashion—to be in this field in the first place,” he says.
Now, his own ephemeral work has entered Björk canon. “If anyone could actually connect all of these elements together,” Wun says of couture, the eclipse, and Iceland’s striking landscapes, “it could only be Björk herself.”
