How Beyoncé’s Anrealage LED Dress for ‘Cowboy Carter Tour’ Was Created: 35,000 Lights, Japanese Architecture Inspiration and Extensive Rehearsals
Beyoncé debuted her “Cowboy Carter Tour” on Monday in Los Angeles, lighting up the stage with an LED dress created by Kunihiko Morinaga, the designer behind the Japanese brand Anrealage. The dress, worn during her performance of “Daughter,” features approximately 35,000 full-color LEDs that transform continuously to match the song’s progression.
Morinaga, who had previously collaborated with Beyoncé during the singer’s “Renaissance” era, was invited to create the one-of-a-kind dress after presenting Anrealage’s fall 2025 collection during Paris Fashion Week in March. The collection featured a similar high-tech dress that inspired Beyoncé’s styling team, led by Shiona Turini.
“After accepting the offer, I, along with my team, traveled back and forth between Japan and Los Angeles to design and produce an original outfit. The result was a crinoline dress made with our signature ‘Led Textile,’ a flexible fabric capable of displaying shifting colors, patterns and graphics like a liquid crystal screen,” Morinaga told WWD via email.
The designer collaborated with Mplusplus, a Japanese design firm led by Minoru Fujimoto that integrates LEDs into textiles. Mplusplus was responsible for developing a wireless control system to program the lights’ choreography.
“To ensure visibility in a stadium setting, we enlarged the graphic elements of the LED design and made fine adjustments to brightness levels up until the final stages. Because synchronization between the dress lighting and the stage lighting was crucial, we conducted extensive rehearsals to perfect the interplay between them,” the designer said.
The entire production of the dress took about one-and-a-half months, including the rehearsals. “Our team controlled the visuals in real time from offstage, syncing the design with the music as the performance unfolded,” Morinaga said.
The fabric of the dress was inspired by traditional Japanese azekura storehouse architecture, combining breathability and moisture-wicking properties with a unique optical effect. “It 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 explained.
The result, as seen onstage, is a light show that begins with the dress in a red tartan pattern, transitions into a half-blue motif, and becomes entirely covered in vivid crimson sequins. The dress then morphs into a trompe-l’oeil black lace motif, followed by a dazzling gold sequin look.
“It eventually shifts 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,” Morinaga said. “It was a truly epic visual performance.”
Morinaga felt honored by seeing his creation onstage. “At Paris Fashion Week, what we presented was a glimpse into the near future — 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 always reminds us of the true power of creation,” he said.
The “Cowboy Carter Tour” debuted at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The tour will feature 32 shows across nine cities in the U.S. and Europe, including Chicago, New Jersey, London, Paris, Houston, Las Vegas and more.
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