Backstage with Björk: An exclusive tour diary from her creative team

One can’t predict when the phenomenon that is Björk might magically appear in concert. Like the Aurora Borealis, the Icelandic artist’s live performances are otherworldly and rare. During the recent Björk Orkestral tour, Vogue Scandinavia shadowed her creative team backstage in Miami as they readied this Nordic tour de force and learned about how they approach each date and place, be it Reykjavik or Los Angeles, with artful reverence and a sublime spectacle.

“Björk’s music is the inspiration for everything we do together,” says her longtime stylist Edda Gudmundsdottir, who is also Icelandic. “For each of Björk’s albums, she creates a character and colour palette.” Unlike previous tours which were more album-driven, the set list for Björk Orkestral was made up of Björk signatures and her most haunting and mischievous hits, such as Joga, I’ve Seen It All, and The Hunter. This in turn gave Gudmundsdottir more eras and moods to explore.

“For the Cornucopia tour, we had a nine-piece band wearing Balmain haute couture. Björk usually wears two outfits at each show. For the Orkestral shows, it’s usually Björk alone with a local orchestra and she wears one to two outfits per show,” says Gudmundsdottir.

While the team were searching for the right looks for the various performances, Olivier Rousteing debuted his first haute couture show for Balmain. “We thought the shapes and colors would be the perfect match for the Cornucopia utopian world,” Gudmundsdottir says. “They both blend into the biological landscape and stand apart from it.”

Outfits were designed for each of the nine orchestral musicians, with adaptations made depending on their respective instruments and required movements. “A huge challenge that the house of Balmain executed perfectly,” notes Gudmundsdottir. “Later on, I found out that Björk was actually one of the inspirations for Olivier’s collection.”

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Together with creative director James T. Merry, the trio are always on the lookout for the right ensemble for each project. Gudmundsdottir notes they cast a wide net, from fashion students to established haute couture houses, slowly and constantly gathering a library of looks and patiently awaiting for the right occasion to arise.

“It’s something of a zeitgeist. The designers we collaborate with are usually making something that we have been researching as well. Same as making new friends,” she says. “There is a common thread that connects us. I tend to stay away from norm core [or] following the top trends of each season when working with Björk.”

Though looks are arranged months in advance, last-minute adjustments are sometimes required to ensure freedom of movement (and no wardrobe malfunctions) on stage. For example, two seamstresses flew into Miami from Milan for last-minute alterations on a Del Core gown by Daniel Del Core, an emerging young designer and former right-hand of Gucci’s Alessandra Michele.

“I admire the talent and the craftsmanship of all the designers we collaborate with. They are each so unique and innovative in their own way,” says Gudmundsdottir, who also enlisted custom looks from threeASFOUR, Noir Kei Ninomiya and Iris Van Herpen. In Iceland, where the tour first began at the landmark Harpa concert hall, Björk wore custom floor-length dresses by Valentino and Balenciaga.

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“We tend to use more avant-garde couture looks which often require complicated construction in order to be wearable for an uninterrupted 90 minute stage performance,” Gudmundsdottir says. She also insists that the process is deeply collaborative. ”Björk herself is the best stylist I have ever met and finds a lot of the looks herself,” she adds. “In fact, Björk has styled herself for the majority of her career. She knows what she wants and keeps me endlessly inspired, motivated, and curious about the art of fashion.”

Indeed, it wouldn’t be Björk unless aesthetic codes were pushed to their breathtaking limit. “She is a risk taker when it comes to fashion and function and will pull off the most difficult outfits as long as they fit the performance character. I make sure before she goes on stage that she can move and figure out what the challenge of each outfit is for the stage and solutions to it,” says Gudmundsdottir.

The decades-long friendship between artist and stylist is a rarity in the oft-fickle music industry. Gudmundsdottir, who has worked with other talent from Bebe Rexha to Mariah Carey, recognises their bond is unique. “Björk and I grew up together in Iceland, experiencing the same cultural, music and fashion references. We went to the same school and have a lot of mutual friends. She is incredibly loyal with her chosen team,” she says. “I feel that there is huge value in that sort of collaboration. We keep building up from what we have learned based on past trials and errors rather than the usual 'serial speed dater' freelance relationship between an artist and a stylist.” And she still gets a thrill from seeing her work on stage. “A Selenicereus Grandiflorus moment each time,” as Gudmundsdottir describes it.

After a chance meeting in New York in 2009 through mutual friends, UK artist James T Merry found himself travelling the world with Björk as she worked on her Biophilia album. Their all-encompassing work on that record led to Merry soon relocating to Iceland, where he is now based.

“In the 13 years that we have worked together, my role has changed a lot from year to year. So it has often been a little tricky to define exactly what it is that I do," says Merry. "We finally settled upon this co-creative director title, as in general I collaborate with her on all of the visual parts of her output.”

Their singular creative process vacillates wildly depending on the project, which could include a photoshoot, a music video, live tour, or VR exhibition. “[We exchange] lots of shared references, watching movies together, sharing books, and trying to identify what would visually marry her music most seamlessly,” he says of their ongoing dialogue. “She will usually have a very specific and idiosyncratic sense of what the aesthetic should be for each project, and my main mission is to tune myself into that as clearly and precisely as possible, and to offer what bits from my own world feel right.”

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Building a dialect and narrative is also key to their work. “In the early stages of an album, it is often about creating a visual shorthand and language between us, pinpointing what works and what doesn't and figuring out the character that inhabits this new world,” Merry says. “As a project develops, and we start collaborating with different artists, my role is to oversee that and keep sight of her vision.”

Tour preparation and performance is one of the most demanding aspects of Merry's work, with Cornucopia shows being the most technically complex. “We are a relatively small team, so it was a big task but I am really proud of where we ended up,” he says.

Merry knows that anything expected or status quo is verboten in favour of the avant-garde. Or as Björk calls it, “digital theatre.” Merry explains: “She wanted to create a live performance with all the physical magic and romanticism of traditional theatre, but reconfigured so it had a futuristic tech spirit at its core,” he says. As Björk puts it, "Where the acoustic and digital will shake hands.”

Merry also designs and hand crafts all of the singer’s signature surrealist masks that transform her into an enchanted creature on stage. To date, he’s created 69 pieces for her. “For this recent leg of the tour, I decided it was time to revisit some of my previous designs but to evolve them into their final form,” he says.

“I also re-made all of the masks for Viibra [Björk’s flute septet] and the choir [for] the first show in LA. I don’t think anyone even noticed, but it was kind of just for me,” he says.

“I had always wanted to tweak some of those designs, and incorporate new metalwork skills I had learned since I originally made them at the start of the tour back in 2019,” says Merry, of the mask he also created for Björk’s flutists.

Careful consideration is made to ensure pieces do not impede Björk or her band from singing and playing their instruments. “The majority of my masks have nothing covering the mouth or the lower half of the face, so that Björk is able to sing or perform live with a microphone," says Merry.

“The masks for the flute players similarly needed to keep most of their face clear, so they could play and see their way around the stage,” he notes. Merry’s work with Björk has led to other high-profile commissions, such as Tilda Swinton at the Venice Film Festival in 2021. “All the requirements were the exact opposite of all my usual masks for Björk,” he shares. “I had a lot of fun making that one because I was able to design around areas of the face that I usually need to leave clear.”

It’s also imperative that his designs both complement and contrast her elaborate ensembles. “It is always special for me to see Björk wearing Iris Van Herpen with one of my masks,” says Merry, who also made the headpieces for her Fall 2021 haute couture collection.

He admits that ensuring his pieces are soundly constructed and stay put keeps him up at night. “How to make the masks appear to float around the head without an obvious fastening, whilst still being fixed firmly enough not to fall off during a performance?” he says of his biggest design quandary. “It is always a balance between these two things, but I will usually sacrifice stability or wearability if it means it will make it look more magical. My aim is for the headpieces to look like they are growing organically out of the head, so I design them to hold themselves onto the face.”

He also says that his adopted home keeps him inspired and prolific. “I was hardly even making any artwork until I moved to Iceland. It gives me the space and time to imagine,” says Merry, whose home studio is mountainside and 20 minutes removed from Reykjavik’s bustle. “Nature permeates my everyday life. I’m a country boy at heart, but I need to be based out of the city in order to be fully creative and happy.”

There is also a geothermal perk to Icelandic life. “I can't live now without the Icelandic pools," he says. "I go swimming every day and that ritual is so central to my working life too, I have most of my best ideas in the hot tub.”

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Berlin-native Johannes Jaruraak first made a name for himself as an accomplished drag artist performing under the name Hungry, which parlayed into high-profile editorial assignments and coverage in The New York Times, among other publications. Soon, Jaruraak had caught the attention of Merry for his “distorted drag” makeup looks.

“He messaged me saying that we appeared to be from the same planet,” remembers Jaruraak of their initial conversations. Merry was curious to see if they’d ever consider applying makeup designs onto other people. “Björk's face was the first I ever put a Hungry design on, except for my own,” Jaruraak says.

His first big project for the singer was for 2017’s Utopia. “During work on the album's visuals, we had collaborated on creating a character to inhabit the world Björk had imagined,” he says. “Each makeup look for the tour is a version of that, put through a prism. The framework of distortion is already created by the styling, hair, and especially James' masks, so I try for it to be most complementary.”

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And no two performances, or faces, are alike. “As we do change up the styling for each show, the makeup has to adapt,” Jaruraak says. “It's quite exciting, really, going into the day, not knowing what to create.”

The artist is also known for his non-traditional approach, which he modifies for Björk’s performances versus photoshoots. “Since a lot of my unconventional techniques come with longer application times and some physical inconvenience, I tend to avoid them for the live shows,” he says. “Contact lenses, adhered face pieces, and SFX elements would end up being a distraction during the performance, so I try to work more classically and efficiently, without sacrificing too much of the design.”

Björk’s tour continues in June 2022 in Helsinki. For more information, visit björktour.com.