Invited by BNP Paribas Fortis Private Banking, MWO stepped in as designer and scenographer for a fashion show staged in The Greenhouse, a hidden oasis within The Standard Hotel in Brussels, bringing an exclusive, material-driven experience to the evening.
For the performance, Mathilde Wittock created costumes for six dancers from Soundroot, a material grown from living plant roots. Over two months, the plants were cultivated and harvested in the studio, then sculpted by hand and shaped with an algae-based bioplastic. Each silhouette explores the idea of an augmented nature, where bodies and living matter are reimagined at a time when the natural world is itself being transformed.
“I am not a fashion designer,” says Wittock. “I design materials and objects, and what you are looking at is no ordinary textile. Each piece grew in my studio, from seeds and their embryo, before being sculpted by hand.” Conceived as dance costumes, the pieces bring a usually immobile material to life. Through the movement of the dancers, the roots find a new form of expression.
The story doesn’t end on the runway. Once dismantled, each costume will be transformed and reassembled into a light fixture, to be revealed in an exhibition in September 2026. It is an invitation to imagine a design where the living becomes material, where natural growth becomes a tool for creation, and where every object can live several lives in symbiosis with the living world.
The evening was hosted by BNP Paribas Fortis Private Banking at The Standard Brussels, alongside Natan Couture, Sisley Paris, Façon Jacmin, Daure Jewellery and JML Concept.
Choreography by Lucca Berlo. Orchestration by Guillaume Joveneau.
With thanks to my interns Larissa Rouiller, Lise Bonnefoux and Eloïse Didier.