First Bella Hadid’s Spray-On Dress, Now Robot Dogs Strut Down Coperni’s Runway
The modeling world is a cutthroat dog-eat-dog place where only the top of the class ever make it out onto runways and the magazine covers. With brands ever looking for the perfect faces to strut their wares, fashion house Coperni takes a different approach this season by hiring robots. Well, robot dogs, to be specific.
Coperni, most famous for spraying on a literal dress onto model Bella Hadid for its Spring Summer 2023 collection, is not ready to be a one-hit wonder as its latest show sees Boston Dynamics dogs making it big on the catwalk—or the “dogwalk” in this case.
The show opened with five of the robots taking to the stage, walking with all the grace of a spider as they commanded the audience’s attention. They were soon joined by human models who walked among them, sharing the spotlight and displaying harmony between humans and droids.
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This seems to be what Coperni was trying to portray to its audience. The idea to have the ‘Spot’ dogs share the runway came from the 17th-century poem The Wolf and the Lamb by Jean de la Fontaine. The idea was to capture this future we are heading toward, where robots and humans will have to find a way to live with each other as the wolf and the lamb did.
According to The Guardian, the minds behind Coperni, Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Valliant, met with the creators of the Spot dogs and found that Boston Dynamic’s approach to spreading peace with its robots resonated with them. This comes after Boston Dynamics has signed a charter that promises none of its droids will ever handle weapons.
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As the show continued, the pack of Spots and the models began to interact, with one even removing a jacket one of the girls had been wearing. In another instance, one of the droids picked up a handbag and carried it around for the audience to see.
Fashion and technology coming together have always been exciting spectacles to witness. Other designers, such as Alexander McQueen, famously had a robot spray paint a dress Shalom Harlow wore during one of his shows. With Coperni’s entrance, is it a step foward into a collaborative future between haute couture and AI, or are fashionistas staring straight into Black Mirror?
[via Highsnobiety and The Guardian, Photo 252546808 © Nguyen Quang | Dreamstime.com]
