Technology Is All About Timing, Say Coperni Founders
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Even for such avid technophiles as Coperni cofounders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer, not every new technology is worth adopting.
“We are careful with technology because it’s a big deal,” Vaillant said in an interview with WWD Paris bureau chief Joelle Diderich at WWD’s Tech Symposium. Although they are keen to experiment as soon as possible, the investment for an independent label can be steep in terms of money, time and human resources.
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On top of that, there is one parameter no brand can control: timing.
Vaillant gave the example of the heated coats they presented at the beginning of their two-year tenure as artistic directors of Space Age brand Courrèges, which he called “one of the best places to experiment” the connection between fashion and technology, as founder André Courrèges had been an engineer.
While they caught the eye, the coats didn’t catch on commercially. “I don’t think the customer was ready to wear technologic clothes,” he said. “But it’s important to try because one day the consumer will be ready.”
The internet was certainly ready for Coperni, the label behind arguably the most viral moment of 2022, which saw Bella Hadid being spraypainted into a liquid dress on the runway. It had a media impact value of $26.3 million, including $20.9 million on social media, within the 48 hours that followed the spring 2023 show, according to Launchmetrics.
But that moment was seven years in the making, the designers revealed.
During their tenure at Courrèges, Meyer had discovered the work of London-based Manuel Torres, the head of Fabrican Ltd. and inventor of the Spray-on fabric, but the pair had eschewed pursuing that avenue as “it was not the right time and that’s something interesting with tech — the question of timing,” Vaillant recalled.
“Sometimes they come too early or too late and it’s really about [whether] people can understand them today, react or embrace it,” he continued.
When the public does embrace it, the rewards can be huge.
Case in point: the domino effect of their spray-on dress moment was nearly immediate. By the next morning, not only did they have double the amount of followers but the impact was noticeable on sales — not the concept dress worn by Hadid, but “normal clothes,” as Vaillant put it.
And Coperni has even broken out of the fashion industry and onto the wider public stage, as the designers said they’d been featured in the “Mickey Mouse” children’s magazine as an example of how science can be harnessed.
“What we learned from this project is that Coperni can be a platform,” said Meyer, noting the brand’s opportunity to showcase technology from artists or scientists.
But technology is not the be-all, end-all for Coperni. For all its futuristic touches and techniques, the brand remains “very human and present” according to Vaillant. For Meyer, too, it was the combination of their teams, the venue and the collaborative effort of all involved that had turned Hadid’s spray-on dress into a “something magical,” an occasion that would remain “one of the best moments in our life” and “a reminder of why we do this job.”
Take their fall 2021 show. In the face of continued sanitary restrictions and a curfew, hurdles to many fashion shows, they arranged a flotilla of cars that kept guests within the allowed numbers while creating an in-person event.
Staunch believers that humans can live in harmony with machines, as they stated after their use of Boston Dynamics robot dogs in their fall 2023 show left some uneasy, Meyer and Vaillant “think we have to embrace it instead of fighting it,” the latter said.
They decided to work with the American robotics company because they had signed a non-weaponization charter and use robots where conditions are markedly unsafe for humans, such as mine disposal or nuclear cleanup, according to Vaillant.
“It was interesting to open the debate” to hear all sides of the argument and they “do still believe that it is a good thing and that humans will always be stronger than the machines,” he continued. “If you control it well, you can do beautiful things.”
For the Coperni duo, who “always loved the idea of innovation, research, science” as well as science fiction aesthetics, “technology was there since the beginning” of the brand, founded in 2013 and named after Renaissance polymath and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, Meyer said.
“As young designers, we have a duty to invent the future and make the world maybe better, make it evolve,” he continued.
That could mean using AI to write their press releases, but also harness an array of technologies to improve the fashion process throughout.
There’s textile innovation, which saw them use jersey with built-in moisturizing and UV-protection properties or add a layer of silver for antiviral properties, but for Meyer, the next challenge for designers is “to go to factories and try to rethink the system,” improving its workflow and processes through the use of robotics and other technologies.
And it may also be a way to reconcile a never abating appetite for new styles, affordable prices and sustainable practices, according Vaillant, offering the likes of 3D printing or sprayable fabric as a possible way to produce better and curtail the price-led dominance of fashion fashion.
“Hopefully one day, we’ll be able to press a button and spray a T-shirt….Maybe sooner or later we’ll be able to print some garments,” Vaillant said. “We have a lot of ideas and dreams.”
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