Björk’s Futuristic Coachella Looks Were Inspired by Drones
When Björk hit the main stage at Coachella over the past two weekends, the singer surprised fans with a stripped-down orchestra set, backed by conductor Bjarni Frimann and the Hollywood String Ensemble. Above her, a special drone light show also filled the night sky. The Icelandic performer tells Vogue she wanted to keep her festival experience minimal this time around. “In my experience, what usually works at festivals are either enormous things or really stripped-down, naked ballad-y things,” says Björk. “The middle stuff must go!”
For the past few years, Bjork has been busy on her Cornucopia and Björk Orkestral tours, and the artist says she wanted to bring the “unplugged” vibe of her latter tour to Coachella. “I decided not to change Orkestral and pile visuals on stage, rather keep the simplicity of it—but add drones in the sky,” says Björk. To do so, she worked with James Merry, the creative director of her concerts, to produce a special light show that riffed off the idea of sound and movement. “From the start, Björk was keen for the drone shapes to be quite architectural and organic, moving more like sound and waveforms,” says Merry. The singer adds, “Usually drone imagery has been very figurative, animals and so on, but I wanted more architectural and physics shapes—curves based on biology, like cells and microorganisms.”
Björk’s futuristic fashion looks added even more drama to the performances. “Having no visuals on stage, my costume had to do all the talking,” says Björk. For week one, she chose a molecular-like creation from Noir Kei Ninomiya’s fall 2023 collection. “I chose the Noir dress because the techno dots in it went well with the drones,” says Björk. “The theme was dots, dots, dots.” For week two, she wore an ethereal white look from Noir Kei Ninomiya’s spring 2023 collection featuring a transparent construction, adorned with silver studs and white feathery strands. Edda Gudmundsdottir, Bjork’s stylist, says the designs were the perfect thing to match Björk’s energy on-stage. “[Kei’s] work is raw, but delicate and mesmerizing, which matches Björk’s voice and stage presence,” says Gudmundsdottir. “I feel he’s one of the most experimental and intelligent designers right now.”
For the second half of the performance during week two, Björk changed into a high-tech Clara Daguin dress that featured 1,430 hand-embroidered LED lights that reacted to sound (it was controlled by a microprocessor with a built-in microphone). She also wore supporting pieces like a silver skirt by Weisheng Paris, custom latex by Venus, and a Solangel bodysuit.
Punctuating all of these looks were dramatic headpieces designed by Merry, which also called back to the drones. “The masks were inspired by sonic behavior,” says Björk. “Me and James have talked through the years a lot about visuals based on sound.” The extraterrestrial-like masks were 3D-printed from different types of resin, by the company Secca in Japan. “The first week s masks were inspired by sound waves, biological spirals, and sonic booms,” says Merry. “The second week s masks were inspired by fishbones, orchids, and plant stamens; I wanted this mask to react and change color under specific UV/blue stage lights, making it transform during the performance to have a bioluminescent underwater feeling.”
