Can desire be engineered? Coperni examines how algorithms, viral runway moments and audience response are changing fashion today
Can desire be measured—or is it precisely what escapes data? As algorithms, predictive analytics and real-time consumer behaviour reshape the industry, this question has moved from theory to practice. At Istituto Marangoni Milano, the talk ”A.ESTHETIC I.NTELLIGENCE • Discussing Data & Desire” used it as a starting point to explore a broader shift in how fashion understands creativity, visibility and value.
The conversation took a more concrete turn with Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant, the duo behind Coperni—a Paris-based brand now synonymous with viral runway moments, fashion technology and experimental materials. Their work offers a sharp lens through which to examine how fashion houses now navigate systems driven by data, media circulation and audience response, while continuing to produce moments that resist full prediction.
From the Bella Hadid spray-on dress to large-scale runway formats that blur the line between fashion show and cultural event, Coperni’s trajectory mirrors the industry’s wider transformation.
From Copernicus to Coperni: Science, Strategy and the Brand’s Rise
Founded in Paris in 2013, Coperni was built from the outset as a dual structure: Meyer leading design, Vaillant shaping strategy. The two met while studying in Paris and developed a working method that combined technical construction with a strong awareness of positioning. Recognition came early—the ANDAM Prize in 2014, followed by a nomination for the LVMH Prize. Even the name, a reference to Copernicus, points to a reorientation: a way of thinking about systems from a different centre, and a scientific sensibility that has underpinned everything since.
Their appointment as artistic directors of Courrèges in 2015 marked an important institutional chapter. During those two years, they redefined how a brand could be presented and perceived, extending their focus beyond the garment to the conditions in which it appears. The collaboration ended in 2017, following the FW17 collection, and led them back to Coperni, where a more exploratory direction could take shape.
When relaunched in 2018, Coperni began to operate less like a conventional label and more like an ongoing project, one in which fashion intersects with technology and contemporary culture without settling into a fixed format.
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When Data Reshapes Creativity, What Becomes of Intuition in Fashion
For decades, fashion has operated within a familiar narrative: creativity as either pure genius or innate commercial instinct; the designer as a singular, almost untouchable figure; the collection as the result of an intuitive gesture, guided by a feel for the audience and, at times, hemmed in by the less welcome demands of marketing. With the rise of algorithms, social media-driven hype and digital interaction, however, that story—grounded in sensibility—has begun to crack under the pressure of increasingly precise metrics and predictive systems.
Coperni’s work unfolds within these conditions. Their approach holds onto intuition while bringing in sharper attentiveness, using data to observe behaviour, engagement and perception with greater clarity. The result is a fashion practice that knows exactly where it stands, engaging directly with the systems through which it moves.
Runway as System: How Coperni Builds Attention and Participation
Nowhere is this clearer than in their use of the runway. Coperni’s shows are built around high-impact moments that emerge from the intersection of two things: Meyer and Vaillant’s sense of timing—that very personal ability to recognise what feels right, and when—and an acute reading of emerging trends, anticipating what is about to gain momentum and turning it into immediate media attention.
For instance, in FW23, robotic dogs developed by Boston Dynamics walked the runway alongside models in a choreographed sequence that introduced a subtle tension, as gestures of control and resistance between human and machine.
More recent shows push this further. For Fall/Winter 2025-26, Coperni staged a live LAN party, with hundreds of gamers connected in real time as models moved through the space—collapsing the boundary between spectator and participant, and quietly dismantling the structure of the event itself.
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From Swipe Bag to Material Experimentation: Design as Interface
One of the ideas that surfaced in conversation with Meyer and Vaillant was the notion of carewear—a term that points away from clothing as a fixed, finished object and towards something defined by its relationship with the body: responsive, evolving, alive with the wearer’s input. It’s a small conceptual shift with significant implications for how a garment is designed, experienced, and understood.
This perspective runs through Coperni’s work from the outset, extending even to its most commercial propositions. The Swipe bag is the clearest example: inspired by the gesture of unlocking a smartphone, it translates a digital action into a physical object, embedding interaction directly into its form. From there, the same object is pushed into increasingly unlikely territory.
Later collections push this into outright material research. Variations of the Swipe bag have been produced through processes that sit closer to science than craft—liquid-based fabrication, versions incorporating meteorite fragments, and ultimately the Air Swipe, engineered from nanomaterials and composed almost entirely of air.
Much of this happens through collaborations with scientists, engineers and research institutions—including Fabrican and MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab—placing fashion in direct conversation with disciplines that don’t share its assumptions or vocabulary.
Coperni also works at the extremes of value and perception. Glass versions of the Swipe bag, alongside solid-gold editions, position the piece between utility and proposition, where use becomes secondary to the concept it carries.
Of course, it’s not just about best-selling bags: at Coperni, clothing also functions as an interface, mediating between body, material and imagination. Bella Hadid’s spray-on dress—created live on the runway on 1 October 2022 and quickly circulating across global media—became a show within a show. It reframed not just how a garment could come into being, but also what the relationship between clothing, the body and the audience could mean.
Can Desire Be Predicted, or Does It Still Escape Data?
Despite the growing presence of data, one element continues to resist stabilisation: desire. Patterns can be mapped and behaviour anticipated, but the moment something becomes desirable remains difficult to predict.
The Coperni SS23 show made this tension visible. Bella Hadid stood motionless as a liquid fabric, developed through Fabrican technology, was sprayed directly onto her body, forming a dress in real time. The gesture had precedents, most notably Alexander McQueen’s 1999 spray-painted dress, but the emphasis here shifted towards a process grounded in scientific development.
The image circulated immediately, becoming the defining moment of Paris Fashion Week and generating headlines for months. Nothing about the scene was improvised: extensive testing and repeated trials ensured the technology could withstand runway conditions. Even so, technical precision alone could not secure cultural resonance— that part remains contingent, impossible to engineer in advance. Events of this kind are designed to generate attention; what they cannot control is what attention does once it enters the media sphere.
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Fashion as Cultural Production: Why Coperni Stages Shows for Attention
Coperni demonstrates a precise understanding of how fashion now operates within networks driven by prediction and real-time interaction and response, and builds this awareness directly into its runway practice. Spectacle is not decoration here; it is structure. This is as true in presentations that engage with scientific processes as in those that borrow from the codes of mainstream entertainment.
The Spring/Summer 2025 show at Disneyland Paris is the clearest instance of this. Staged in front of the illuminated Sleeping Beauty castle—the first fashion show held within the park—it positioned fashion in a setting designed for collective fantasy, where the boundary between childhood imagination, scenography and clothing dissolved almost entirely.
The scale of the production, involving hundreds of attendees, reveals how closely fashion now aligns with the same mechanisms that govern the entertainment industry. Here, the show functions as a node in a broader system built around circulation. Magnitude creates the conditions for impact. What it cannot determine is the shape that impact takes—whether it collapses inward or radiates outward, whether it lasts a news cycle or reshapes a conversation.
The Future of Fashion Lies in the Tension Between Data and Desire
The talk “A.ESTHETIC I.NTELLIGENCE • Discussing Data & Desire” described a condition in which fashion can no longer be understood through intuition alone, even as it continues to resist full quantification. Coperni’s path reflects that condition.
From material experimentation to runway moments designed for circulation, from high-tech shows to productions built around visibility at scale, their work reveals how deeply fashion is now entangled with systems of prediction and response. None of this resolves the central question. Fashion exceeds the garment because it is also in the business of producing desire, and desire remains the one element that refuses to become fully legible. What Coperni makes visible is not an answer, but the shape of the tension itself: the unstable ground on which fashion now operates.
Agnese Pasquinelli
Alumna, Milano