Review of Coperni Fall 2023 Fashion Show
Man’s Best Friend?
By Mark Wittmer
With Bella Hadid’s spray-on dress that set the internet ablaze, Coperni undeniably had the most talked-about moment of last fashion season. As they moved into Fall 2023, they were faced with the difficult challenge of how to follow up such a memorable act – would they make a sensible return to a standard runway format and just focus on strong clothes, or continue its goal to march boldly into the future?
Today’s show was a resounding confirmation of the latter.
Through a partnership with well-known robotics design firm Boston Dynamics, the models shared the runway and interacted with uncanny, dog-like robots – the firm’s famous “Spot” model.
These robots actually opened the show, milling about as an ambient soundscape filled the room. Eventually, models entered, and soon woman and machine began to interact: one robot featured a mechanical arm that pulled a jacket off a Rianne Van Rompaey’s shoulders, while another robotic canine introduced a new bag for the brand.
It’s a bit easy to lose sight of the actual clothing with all of these Instagrammable robot moments going on, but the creative director duo of Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant did good work to move their vision of contemporary cool tinged with futurism forward with slick tailoring and inventive uses of technical fabrics, while making the exciting move of introducing menswear.
The robo-dogs revisit and update the figure of the wolf from the story of the wolf and the lamb in Jean de La Fontaine’s classic 1688 book of fables, which graced each seat in the audience as the collection’s “show notes.” It’s not exactly an uplifting tale; a wolf is in a bad mood and, despite all the reasons the lamb gives not to eat him, eats the lamb anyway just because he can. The moral? Those who have the power to have it their way will always have it their way.
A bit of a chilling message, to be sure, especially as the world continued to be wracked by imperialist violence and exploited by corporate greed. But perhaps the updating of the wolf with the robot means that eventually, as technical and social progress move forward side by side, we can overcome divisions and power imbalances to live in harmony?
As an important side note, though, this idea that humans and robots can and ought to live in harmony feels a bit hypocritical considering one of the major investors in Boston Dynamics is the United States military – it’s hard to believe these robots will always be put to use in the interest of peace. Who is the wolf, and who is the lamb? Who has power? Who benefits from the current distribution of power? The real questions to be asked here may not be the kind that a brand which benefits from current economic and political structures wants people to be asking.
It’s exciting to see a brand so proactively and imaginatively concerned with the future – even if their actual work hasn’t quite caught up with their far-reaching ambition.
For as much as Coperni may say that this is a timely rumination on humanity and its intersection with technology, it’s hard to put aside the fact that this is first and foremost a social media stunt. Which is not necessarily a bad thing; in fact it’s an undeniably good thing for the brand. If nothing else, we’re glad that they’re making people ask questions, and always happy to see a cool-looking runway show. We’re looking forward to see the brand continue to settle into its pace and find the words to really tell us what kind of future it wants to see.