Coperni's New Star Model Is a Dog-Shaped Robot

Coperni very much broke the internet when it literally sprayed a dress onto Bella Hadid's body as the finale of its Spring/Summer 2023 runway show. What next? How about robot dogs!

Coperni's Fall/Winter 2023 fashion show began in an airy set filled with Boston Dynamics' instantly-recognizable "Spot" robot.

Several of the yellow, canine-like robots paced Coperni's set as models strode between them, an ambient soundscape filling the air.

The Spot robots eventually began interacting with the models. One of them sported an arm that caressed a model's face before tugging the jacket off their shoulders.

Later, a canine robot held one of Coperni's new bag designs aloft.

 

It got a little lost in the shuffle of the Bella Hadid spectacle — an inevitable problem with going viral — but Coperni's ultra-viral SS23 moment was really just a demonstration of the fashion brand's fascination with futurism.

FW23, for instance, is "Freely inspired by Jean de la Fontaine’s The Wolf and the Lamb fable, Coperni explains in its show notes.

"Unlike the original fable written in the 17th century, which raises questions relating to the balance of power between the human groups that make up society, Coperni reinterprets the story and transposes it to the year of 2023 with a positive vision of the future."

Coperni's fixation on cutting-edge tech ought to come as no surprise: its signature item is the chunky signature Swipe Bag, a rotund handbag inspired by the motion of swiping up on a smartphone's touchscreen.

The Swipe Bags are so core to the Coperni ethos that the brand previewed its FW23 show with a photo showing a special edition Swipe handbag carved from an honest-to-god meteorite (!).

Back to the Spot robots, though.

"The show presents Coperni’s vision which is that there is neither a dominant nor a dominated, but that mankind and machine can live in harmony," Coperni continued.

Given the current (and deserved) fears about the current fixation on AI tech, that's some serious optimism. I assume Coperni isn't a fan of Will Smith's I, Robot.

Despite the forward-looking aspects of Coperni's presentation, you can actually trace Coperni's fashion-meets-tech influences back to genius designers like Issey Miyake and Alexander McQueen.

The show really feels like a nod to McQueen, in particular, who utilized robot arms to paint model Shalom Harlow's dress in the unforgettable finale of his Spring/Summer 1999 runway show.

Not that Coperni is directly referencing these forebears, of course (or going quite as viral as McQueen once did) but there's precedent for its tinkering.

Also notable about Coperni Fall/Winter 2023: the debut of Coperni menswear. This was the brand's first stab at co-ed ready-to-wear, after solely prioritizing womenswear for the past several seasons.