A white coperni spray-on dress built directly on a model’s body on a live Paris runway. Robot dogs that tugged at jackets. A handbag that is 99 percent air. Coperni, the Paris label behind all three, is closing after a few years of turning fashion into a testing ground for new materials, robotics and sound.
Co-founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer announced the closure on November 4, 2026. This is a look back at the work that made it one of fashion’s most unusual creative voices.
How the brand came to an end
The statement blamed a dispute with Tomorrow Ltd., the brand’s distributor and majority shareholder. In its statement, the duo wrote that Tomorrow had “unilaterally terminated our licensing agreement.”
The coperni spray-on dress on a model
Coperni’s most famous moment came at its spring/summer 2023 show in Paris. Bella Hadid stepped onto the runway, and technicians built a white coperni spray-on dress directly on her body. The liquid contained fibers suspended in a solution that hardened into a flexible textile as it dried.
The material came from Fabrican, a company founded by the Spanish designer and scientist Manel Torres. Within minutes, a designer had adjusted the neckline and cut a slit into the skirt, and Hadid continued her walk in a complete coperni spray-on dress.
Robot dogs on the runway
For its fall/winter 2023 presentation, Coperni brought five Boston Dynamics Spot robots onto the runway. The show drew on Jean de La Fontaine’s fable The Wolf and the Lamb and imagined how people and intelligent machines might relate.
One robot gently removed a model’s jacket before returning it. Another briefly held onto Lila Moss‘s handbag. The machines also approached the front row, turning the walk into an unusual encounter between coperni fashion and robotics.
Coperni’s robot dogs weren’t the only legged machines on show. Robot.com’s R-dog and its stairs test shows where these machines are heading next.
Bags made from air and gel
The fall/winter 2024 Air Swipe Bag, developed with the artist and researcher Ioannis Michaloudis, used silica aerogel. This extremely light solid is about 99 percent air by volume. NASA researchers have used aerogel to capture cosmic dust. The bag weighed around 33 grams and kept the curved silhouette of Coperni’s Swipe bag.
For spring/summer 2025, the brand shifted to a different process for its Ariel Swipe Bag, made with the MIT spinout Rapid Liquid Print. A robotic nozzle extruded blue silicone into a bath of water-based gel, which held the shape while the bag formed. The finished piece had a soft, continuous surface.
Music, machines and memory
For its spring/summer 2024 collection, Coperni presented at IRCAM, the Paris research institute for acoustics and music. The show’s soundtrack, “Forms of Attunement” by the musician u.r.trax, captured the sounds of fabric, zippers and sequins. Walls of rotating panels changed how the sound reached the audience, according to Vogue.
Sound mattered as much as fabric at Coperni’s IRCAM show. Immersive sound installations in transformed spaces explores more for sound-led spaces.
The collection included a leather jacket with flat speakers from the Swedish audio company Transparent, and the speakers ran on a concealed amplifier and battery pack. A Swipe bag was redesigned as a Discman, and a Tamagotchi-shaped case was made with Bandai for fall/winter 2025. Vogue also noted that Humane’s AI Pins appeared on many models’ chests.
Clothing that works with the skin
The brand’s final experiments moved into biotechnology. The C+ collection, released in October 2025, used probiotics and prebiotics developed with the Swiss textile company HeiQ. The fabric contained a bio-based matrix designed to release microorganisms when it touched the skin and warmed with body heat.
The leggings and bodysuits in the collection were built to support the skin’s microbiome, the community of microorganisms that lives on the body. It was a quiet end to a run of loud ideas. Clothing had become something that could interact with a body long after the runway show.
Vaillant and Meyer closed their statement with a hint of what might come next. For now, the work that made coperni fashion distinct stands as a record of what happens when a fashion label treats clothing as an engineering problem.
Sources & Links
Source: designboom.com
Frequently asked questions
Why is the Paris label Coperni shutting down?
Co-founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer announced the closure on November 4, 2026. Their statement blamed a dispute with Tomorrow Ltd., the brand’s distributor and majority shareholder, which they said had “unilaterally terminated our licensing agreement.”
Which company supplied the material for Coperni’s spray-on dress?
The spray-on material came from Fabrican, a company founded by the Spanish designer and scientist Manel Torres. It was used to build a white dress directly on model Bella Hadid at Coperni’s spring/summer 2023 show in Paris.
What material was used in Coperni’s Air Swipe Bag?
The fall/winter 2024 Air Swipe Bag used silica aerogel, an extremely light solid that is about 99 percent air by volume. The bag weighed around 33 grams and kept the curved silhouette of Coperni’s Swipe bag.
Who co-founded the Paris label Coperni?
Coperni was co-founded by Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer. The two announced the brand’s closure on November 4, 2026.
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