coperni ss23

Designers Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant undoubtedly birthed the BEST moment of Paris Fashion Week Spring 2023.

Guests entered a dark room, spotlight on the center platform with an air spray cart beside it. What is this setup? What will happen?

Opening the show is top model, Loli Bahia in a mature and highly serious black look. Throwing an oversized blazer over a more revealing spliced cutout dress creates the perfect balance of girl boss and Friday night drinks with the girlfriends. Black blazers are closet staples and are nothing out of the ordinary. However, the belt element on both elbows creates the illusion that the two pieces of fabric are detached. There is something playful about this construction and attention to detail. The dress beneath this jacket and the dress in look two are part of the hybrid series. Dresses that seem to be unraveling, suspended, and about to reveal the body follow the structured, more masculine suit jacket look. It is perfectly undone, detached, dare I say effortless!

The lingerie element shown in look three above is just a glimpse into their love for playing with feminine wardrobe codes. The lace peaking out from the trousers seems to be the chic Coperni take on the popular y2k ultra-low rise thong look. The star of this look is the subversive and technical cropped jacket. I am living for the reconstruction of the sporty bomber jacket!

Remember the ultra-cool, internet-viral glass bags from Coperni’s fw22 collection? They sewed shards of those bags onto the fourth look above to create a new textile material. It is such a clever way of integrating last season’s pieces into the new season. It is a puzzle of a dress, a puzzle of glass! This dress is the furthest from functional but is a performance in itself, as it sings like a soothing wind chime while the model glides down the runway. What is interesting is the contrast between the harshness of the heavy glass and the thin, airy silk. The collaging of the glass has the appearance of fish scales, especially beside the seafoam silk.

Now, before we get into the iconic closing of this show, we MUST talk about the accessories.

Vittoria Ceretti held the bag of my dreams—three and a half pounds of pure gold. Coperni partnered with an Italian goldsmith who transformed the gold by melting it into the Coperni motif, the Swipe Bag. Its estimated worth is around $106k. This bag is 2DIE4!

Drumroll, please! Time for the performance of the SEASON!!

Miss Bella Hadid herself slowly walks onto the platform in nothing but her undergarments and a pair of magnificently pointy, white slingback heels. Futuristic, video game-like music plays in the background as three people spray a stark white, spider webby paint onto Bella’s blank canvas. A rich, complex artificial smell wafts in the air as they began spraying, it is the smell of liquid cellulose. As Bella Hadid takes the elegant poses of a dancer, they spray the mystery paint into a square-neck, thick strapped modest midi dress. I was impressed. It was a performative approach to reveal the creative process of design.

BUT. My was on the FLOOR when her two straps were peeled from her skin, and draped delicately as an off-the-shoulder moment. They cut a high slit up to her thigh. The seemingly paint-like material dried and transformed into a flowy fabric. THE Bella Hadid walked off the luminescent platform and strutted around the room in her elegant spray-on dress.

Initially, Coperni’s dress demo reminded me of Legend, Alexander Lee McQueen’s ss1999. Shalom Harlow wore a voluminous strapless white dress held up by a leather belt stood on a spinning platform and was doused in spray paint by robots.

The show is set in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, home of some of the most prized technology artifacts, which was the perfect location for the introduction of this new air-sprayed fabric technology. This cellulose spray technique was true innovation. In real-time, art was being created and the audience had a front-row seat.
From the more-conservative business-woman opening look to Bella Hadid coming out in just her undergarments, there was a progression towards revealing the female body. Meyer and Vaillant prioritized the Coperni woman this season. The young Coperni girl is now a woman, emphasizing this metamorphosis effect. This collection was named Coperni Femme, after their very first collection in 2015: it was an ode to a reconfigured paradigm of femininity.

Just when I thought fashion had lost its spark, its artful performative touch, Coperni took us all back to the Alex McQueen days of the fashion show experience.