Coperni’s spray-on dress finale with Bella Hadid in 2022
On September 30, 2022, Coperni closed its Paris runway show by forming a white dress directly on Bella Hadid. Fabrican’s spray deposited fibres that became a non-woven textile, which the team then cut and shaped before the model walked the runway.
A garment made before the audience
Coperni’s Spring 2023 presentation took place in Paris in September 2022. Its finale, reported on September 30, placed Bella Hadid on a platform while a specialist team sprayed material directly onto her body. The apparent contradiction was the spectacle: a fashion show normally presents clothing already made elsewhere, but this garment took shape in view of the audience. Coperni’s founders, Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant, collaborated with Fabrican and its founder Manel Torres. Fabrican identifies the venue as the Musée des Arts et Métiers, a setting closely associated with the history of making and invention.
Cloth rather than a layer of colour
Fabrican describes its process as an instant sprayable non-woven fabric. A liquid suspension carries fibres, which adhere to form a textile as the carrier evaporates. The material is therefore different from paint applied to an existing dress. It supplies the substance of the garment itself, without first weaving a sheet of cloth. After application, the team adjusted the result by cutting and shaping it. Fabrican’s account describes the addition of off-shoulder straps and a slit before Hadid walked to join the other models. Human fitting and finishing remained part of the transformation.
Fashion as a demonstration
The performance belonged to a longer runway tradition of making technique visible. Contemporary reporting compared it with Alexander McQueen’s earlier presentation in which machinery spray-painted a dress. The distinction is useful: colouring a garment and forming its fabric are different operations, even when both involve a spray. Coperni’s finale turned a materials process into a public fashion image. Its interest depended on the sequence of actions as much as on the finished silhouette.
What the show established
The event demonstrated a striking way of producing and fitting a textile garment. A runway demonstration alone does not establish manufacturing cost, durability at scale or environmental performance. Fabrican makes further claims about reuse and other applications, which should be identified as the developer’s claims. The accompanying illustration interprets the finishing stage with the model fully dressed. It is not a documentary photograph or a record of the exact arrangement of every technician.
Fashion — David Bowie cover
Desert Sound Colony
This complete cover, premiered by fashion publication i-D, is a thematic connection to fashion as performance and reinvention. It is separate accompaniment, not a claim about the music played during Coperni’s show.
Listen on SoundCloud ↗Follow the evidence.
- Fashionista: Coperni’s September 30 finale ↗
- Fabrican: Developer’s account and fabric-forming technology ↗
- Fabrican Technology: Liquid suspension, fibres and non-woven fabric ↗
- i-D: Desert Sound Colony’s Fashion cover ↗
AI-assisted writing, with institutional and primary sources. Illustration is a reconstruction, not an archival photograph. Published November 7, 2026; updated November 7, 2026. Our approach
