Latest news with #ArnaudVaillant
Forbes
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Coperni's Disneyland Paris Collection Lands At Printemps New York
The Disney X Coperni Pop-Up at Printemps NY Coperni designers Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant took a bite out of the Big Apple to introduce their exclusive Disneyland Paris collaboration collection at the new French multi-brand store, Printemps New York. Introduced last October at Disneyland Paris just outside the City of Lights, the collection, dubbed a "celebration of youth, nostalgia, and imagination," marked the first time a fashion brand was permitted to stage a fashion show at the amusement park, thus diving into the rich design motifs and making them Coperni cool was the assignment. The resulting offerings will be exclusive to the newly opened department store in New York during April. The store was designed to host rotating pop-ups, and the Disney X Coperni is the second company to set up its wares. 'Just One Byte' will display the broadest range of the collection in the US market. The designers Meyer and Vaillant hosted a cocktail event to celebrate, marking a rare appearance in New York. As guests sipped the retailer's house crémant, nibbled canapes, and were offered their apples to take a bite out of, the designers explained why the tie-up was a perfect match. Coperni designers Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer "We are very lucky and very happy to be here because it's a French store, and the Disney collection is about an American company; I think it's the perfect match," Meyer said at the opening event, which also featured an illustrator creating Disney-inspired drawings for the attendees. "I loved the second floor a lot; there was something a bit magical with the decoration and set," he added. A T-shirt from the Disney X Coperni "We wanted to make it cool so people could wear it in the streets and not be a costume. It was a difficult challenge, but we enjoyed it. Coperni is not too snobby; it's real for everyday life and people," he continued. Case in point, a black flat Mary Jane shoe with crystal pavè 'horn' décor was inspired by Maleficient but had a cool, punk edge. The collection—which brought the two Frenchmen back to their childhoods where a trip to the big city also meant Disneyland Paris—riffs on themes such as Snow White's apple, tattered rags that transform into ballgowns, the enchanted rose from Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid's life under the sea. Playing into Disney's cinematic side, the show and collection were divided into three acts: Park Tribes, which plays into Victorian elements, organza butterflies, and vintage Disney T-shirts; The Villain, which transforms these powerful figures tropes into striking modern garments; and The Princess Transformation which uses the brand's signature innovation aspect to make bionic flowers on garments and dresses that morph like a butterfly. A Mickey Mouse-inspired Disney X Coperni handbag. Some of the highlights carried at the pop-up will be bustier gowns and distressed flowers sequined dresses, T-shirts and hoodies with Disney characters, 'Just One Byte' or playful riffs on Disney themes such as Maleficent's horns, and even a crown because who doesn't want a touch of royalty daily. The piece de resistance might be the Mickey ears on the brand's Swipe bag. The collection is an example of the space informing the designs, similar to how the European Music Center inspired that collection. "Sometimes a place can inspire us. In New York, there are so many amazing places," Meyer noted, adding that they had been to The Met and some local art galleries, which begs one to ponder if the duo's next act will reflect the Big Apple, which, while slightly browning, is not yet rotten to the core.
New York Times
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Alas, Clothes Can't Compete With Video Games
The models whooshed by in slinky pants, sailor tops, and finger-toed sneakers, but my seatmate noticed none of it. He was too busy blasting his way up the leaderboard in Fortnite. A triangular tube-top shooting flames could've gone by and this man would've continued hammering on his computer keyboard like Liberace at the piano. On Sunday evening in Paris, Coperni, a French fashion label with a yen for stunty events, staged a fashion show conjoined — admirably, if oddly — with a 200-person LAN party. (Short for local area network, this now-largely archaic method of online gaming has people commune in one space to play a video game together on a shared network.) Coperni's runway was set against four rows of gamers, their faces aglow in the twitchy green light of computer monitors as they swerved around Fortnite's digital world in Hummer-looking trucks, and fired guns at each other. When the show began, the players kept at it, the clicky sounds of their keystrokes competing with the percussive taps of the model's heels striking the floor of the cavernous Adidas Arena. The concept, said Coperni's co-founder Arnaud Vaillant, was 'a tribute to gaming in general and to celebrate this subculture from the '90s.' Still, there was no real crossover in the two proceedings. Coperni's fur jackets weren't playable via joystick. The video game had zilch to do with dresses. There wasn't really a grand message here about the inescapability of tech. It was two spectacles, wedged beside each other to make something newly chaotic. The gamers had been 'cast,' per the brand, with the assistance of Gentle Mates, an e-sports organization. Some were pro e-sports players. Many were friends. At least one claimed to be a total novice. 'We've played Zelda and Final Fantasy when we were younger, the classic stuff, but now it's another world, another generation,' said Mr. Vaillant. 'We always like to link communities together, so fashion and gaming are meeting now.' In the front row, guests were wedged guests between players. The young man at my right angled his keyboard to get better leverage, tic-tacking madly with his fingers on the keys. He, like his 199 peers, wore a headset and a Coperni branded tee. They had already been playing for hours when the showgoers arrived. A winner at the end would be receiving Coperni swag. The few players I spoke with seemed loath to answer my questions rather than jettisoning their opponents into oblivion. I learned they were frequent Fortnite players, but didn't really know what Coperni's clothes looked like before that afternoon. They probably still don't. These players were terrifyingly locked in. They did not appear to glance over their screens at that striped blazer flowing by. They did not pause their million-a-minute clicks to take in a halter-neck dress. I'm a fashion critic, not a video game reporter, so it was my duty to assess the clothes — though I was distressed to watch my seatmate fall to 15th in his game. This was a composed collection, and one that spared us the literalist Fortnite logos on the clothes. (Balenciaga already did that in 2021, reflective of the luxury industry's somewhat shallow 'look at my logo, I get you!' approach to gamer outreach during that early period of metaverse frenzy.) Still, amid a lot of '90s head nods (a denim jacket with a rhinestone tramp stamp, anyone?) there were videogame allusions if you were attuned to spot them. The leg harnesses with little pouches were pure Lara Croft. A series of dresses twinkled like falling pixels on a screen. A glossy tan-black-and-red leather jacket was a clear dupe of the Suzuki moto jacket Angelina Jolie wore in 1995's 'Hackers.' Some dresses looked plush as pillows, such that I could picture a drained gamer repurposing them for a nap after the show. Backstage, the designers described the show's theme as 'choose your own player.' As the models made their final turn I watched a player near me struggle to navigate a truck up a cliff face. I couldn't tell if he was winning or not, but he never broke focus. I didn't either. The game, not the gowns, had got me.
