As Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour draws to a close, let’s turn the spotlight to the luminous dress imagined for the American singer by Kunihiko Morinaga, designer of the Japanese brand Anrealage, following the presentation of his Fall-Winter 2025–2026 collection in Paris on March 4.
By Ludmilla Intravaia
“Beyoncé always reminds us of the true power of creation.” With these words, Kunihiko Morinaga, designer of the Japanese brand Anrealage, expressed his joy at seeing one of his creations worn by the American singer. And not just any creation — a dress featuring no fewer than 35,000 LEDs sparkling brilliantly on the stage of the Cowboy Carter Tour, which began on April 28 in California and will conclude on July 26 in Nevada.
It was while performing her song Daughter at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood that evening that Beyoncé wore, for the first time, the sumptuous crinoline dress “made with our signature ‘Led Textile,’ a flexible fabric capable of displaying shifting colors, patterns, and graphics like a liquid crystal screen,” Kunihiko Morinaga told the American fashion magazine Women’s Wear Daily two days later.
The fabric of the dress “blocks light from the front while allowing RGB light from the back to shine through, enabling the textile itself to function as a screen,” the designer told WWD. The silhouette creates a unique optical effect, shifting from red tartan patterns to blue, then to an all-gold look, before transitioning “into tricolor noise, evoking the American flag — red, white and blue — which then dissolves into monochrome noise. From there, stained glass motifs reminiscent of a cathedral appear and evolve rapidly, culminating in an explosion of light like bursting stars. Finally, the imagery fades into cosmic darkness, and light rains down once more as the dress reaches its climactic glow,” said Kunihiko Morinaga. “It was a truly epic visual performance,” he enthused.
“At Paris Fashion Week, what we presented was a glimpse into the near future,” Kunihiko Morinaga told WWD. “But the moment Beyoncé wore it, it became the present. In that instant, it transcended fashion and became part of culture and history. Creating a one-of-a-kind garment that exists nowhere else in the world — that, to me, is the essence of fashion design.”
Beyoncé’s light-up dress is part of the ongoing creative vision of Kunihiko Morinaga for his brand Anrealage and his Fall-Winter 2025–2026 collection. Entitled Screen, the collection was unveiled during Paris Fashion Week on March 4, 2025. On the catwalk, luminous silhouettes lit by colorful LEDs followed one another, forming a striking contrast with the angular nature of garments inspired by the gaming universe of Roblox and robotic-style shoes produced using 3D printing.
A fashion-tech dream come true, ushering in a new way of thinking about fashion and clothing as a “second-skin screen, envisioning a future where individuals can exchange and share the designs of the clothes they wear. Like a living billboard, soft yarns and textiles embedded with LED-LCD technology (…) can be folded, knitted, sewn, and draped into any shape,” the brand explained on its Instagram account the day after the show.
“A black screen as a space of infinite possibilities.” That is how Kunihiko Morinaga sums up his artistic vision, once again grounded in what technology can offer at its most creative. In the press release for the Screen collection, the brand elaborates further on Instagram, on April 5: “Kunihiko Morinaga for Autumn/Winter 2025–26 imagines a future where black clothes serve as a screen for displaying any color, pattern, message or graphic. Garments morph into mediums for diffusing messages, reflecting and transforming a stream of visuals and information – the screen-Age equivalent of the humble sandwich-board man of the early 20th century, or slogan T-shirts. These screen garments change instantaneously according to the wearer’s mood, drawing from a galaxy of downloadable designs rendered in vivid digital RGB colors unreproducible in CMYK. Patterns of light emerge and fade, giving rise to new and continuous visual expressions. The clothing – like life itself – never stops evolving; there is no final form.”
Watch the full show Screen below.
Both Beyoncé’s dress and the Screen collection were created in collaboration with the Japanese company Mplusplus, a multidisciplinary collective founded in 2013 that specializes in stage technologies using LEDs, robotics, and more. Below, discover an example of their work with LEDs ribbons during a dance performance.
Back in 2023, Anrealage’s designer had already collaborated with Beyoncé for her Renaissance tour, where she wore an outfit that changed colors when exposed to ultraviolet light—a concept Kunihiko Morinaga explored in his Fall-Winter 2023/2024 collection (see here) and in a 2021 Fendi x Anrealage capsule (see there).
It’s also worth noting that some of the stained-glass-inspired patterns in Anrealage’s Screen collection not only echoed the motifs of the American Cathedral in Paris (where the show was held), but also powerfully recalled the iconic ecclesiastical fashion show from Fellini’s Roma. An article in the Boudoir Numérique series “Old school fashion tech” pays tribute to the film’s costume designer, Danilo Donati, the man who, in 1972, invented the very first illuminated mitres and chasubles in the history of Italian cinema (don’t miss it — conveniently, it’s right here).
Fashion-tech dress by Anrealage (Power Spring-Summer 2018 collection), photographed in the Wearable Lab area at the Première Vision Paris trade show on February 12, 2019, in Villepinte (©Le Boudoir Numérique).
Le Boudoir Numérique discovered Anrealage’s fashion tech at the Première Vision trade show in 2019, and has followed this exceptional brand ever since — as you’ll see in the articles below:
- Glam tech recap of Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Fall-Winter 23/24
- Paris FW SS22 - Anrealage travels through the virtual universe of the Japanese anime Belle
- Fendi X Anrealage capsule collection changes colors with ultraviolet rays
* Continue reading with these following Boudoir Numérique articles :
-Paris Fashion Week FW 25-26 – Maitrepierre’s Retro-Tech Fascination
-Drag queen Perla pays tribute to a graceful fashion tech moment
-Stella McCartney: "It’s About Fucking Time that fashion stopped harming animals"
-Paris 24 Olympics - Clara Daguin designs the luminous embroidery on Juliette Armanet's costume
-Balenciaga's Triple S sneaker is adorned with next-gen material Bananatex
-Billie Eilish presents the new innovative vegan bag in Demetra by Gucci
-Boss, the robot Sophia and Tommy Cash pay homage to fashion tech
-Glam tech recap of Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Fall-Winter 23/24
-Paris Fashion Week FW 23/24 –Stella McCartney’s innovative vegan materials
- After Maison Baccarat, Clara Daguin's fashion tech at Première Vision