The Eclipse Effect: Inside Julia Fox’s Show-Stopping Iris van Herpen Moment
The New York City Ballet’s annual Fall Fashion Gala has long represented the sacred intersection where dance meets haute couture, but this year’s iteration—orchestrated by the ever-impeccable Sarah Jessica Parker in her own striking Black Swan-inspired winged ensemble—elevated the evening to something approaching transcendence. Among the constellation of meticulously dressed attendees, Julia Fox emerged as the night’s most compelling vision, wrapped in Dutch couturier Iris van Herpen’s “Eclipse” dress, a three-dimensional marvel that defied categorization.
Fox’s gown appeared, at first glance, like a living coloring book page sprung into dimensional reality—a monochromatic symphony of black and white that seemed to ripple and breathe with each movement. The truth behind its construction revealed van Herpen’s obsessive commitment to craft: thousands of hand-stitched white spheres, each meticulously laser-cut and shaped by hand in varying sizes, layered atop one another to create cascading depths that contoured Fox’s silhouette while simultaneously suggesting flight. The sculptural spheres floated down her body in sweeping movements, their strategic placement creating subtle winged elements that echoed the evening’s choreographic centerpiece—Jamar Roberts’s Foreseeable Future, for which van Herpen had designed the dancers’ costumes featuring her signature honeycomb wings.
From even a modest distance, the dress created an optical illusion of water rippling across skin, while the skirt lifted into architectural fins around the knees and hem, adding structural drama that transformed with every step. It was precisely the sort of kinetic garment that celebrates performance—appropriate for an evening where couture techniques and choreography engaged in their annual pas de deux.
Fox demonstrated admirable restraint in her styling choices, allowing the dress to dominate the narrative. Her footwear—canary yellow Cosmic Court pumps by Loewe—injected an unexpected jolt of color against the monochromatic palette, while her pearl-satin Siren bag by Bhumi provided textural contrast without competing for attention. Her hair, slicked into a ballet-adjacent bun with blonde and purple-dyed ends, nodded to the evening’s dance heritage, while purple accessories and matching eyeshadow created cohesion. Sharpened brows added edge, and a neutral lip ensured the focus remained where it belonged: on van Herpen’s architectural achievement.
The gala itself transcends mere fundraising—it functions as an ideas laboratory where haute couture methodology collides with choreographic innovation. Fox’s dress embodied this philosophy perfectly: the precision of those laser-cut outlines, the meticulous scale patterning, the three-dimensional finish all suggested she wasn’t simply wearing fashion but rather carrying sculpture down the red carpet, blurring the line between garment and art object.
In an era of increasingly safe red carpet choices, Fox reminded us that true fashion moments require courage, vision, and a willingness to become the artwork itself.
