Monday in Paris: Pierre Cardin and Coperni

On the 8th day of Paris Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2024, French brand Pierre Cardin took his signature space-girls underwater, while the duo behind Coperni made theirs trace a pathway to the stardust.

Pierre Cardin: Cardin’s 60’s astronauts trade space for ocean depth

The iconic French brand, recognized as one of the most prolific in terms of licensing since the 60’s — the name has been stamped on furniture, table art and even mineral water— gave a show living up to its monumental heritage.

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Staged within the walls of the Atelier des Lumières, Paris’s 3,000-square-meter exhibition space dedicated to digital art, this season’s collection was revealed against a backdrop of giant digital screens. The screens unraveled at first against a smoky white filament, reminiscent of the Milky Way, before revealing the conductive line of the show: the ocean. Dolphins, sea creatures of all kinds (sharks and pufferfish and anglerfish, oh my!) and coral reefs engulfed guests, which included Amandine Petit, crowned Miss France 2021, and Prince Carlo of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.

While Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin, designer of the house since 2022 and nephew of the late Pierre Cardin has always exploited his founding family member’s notable ‘Space Age’ fashion DNA, he decided for Fall/Winter 2024 to plunge his astronaut amazons into the depths of the ocean. One model wore a full black PVC ensemble under a blood-orange short dress, hemmed with octopus-like tentacles, while another strutted in a foot-length, midnight-blue satin dress with a circular silver brooch in a seashell shape.

In another nod to Poseidon’s turf, the back of one girl’s slim black dress was adorned with undulating, translucent lime green fins, while another’s sharp-shouldered, nipped-waist jacket in waffled nacré brocade shimmered like that of an exotic fish. As for accessories, models wore goggle-like sunglasses and geometrical bags in the shape of triangles clasped with a seashell-like circular Pierre Cardin logo. Looks also spilled out onto the runway in the classic diver’s material of choice: neoprene.

An overall show that left nobody feeling like they were drowning, and revealed a more liberated idea of what Basilicati-Cardin’s vision of the brand now is, evolving from precedent shows which hewed too closely to the same ‘Space Age’ theme.

Coperni: Meteorite muses explode on the runway

French brand Coperni is famous for its modern theatrics; its Spring/Summer 2023 collection featured robot dogs and before that, Bella Hadid’s sensational spray-on dress.

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For Fall/Winter 2024, designer duo Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant occupied Europe’s biggest television studio, Studio 217, located on the outskirts of Paris. Guests were greeted with Apérol spritzes as they waited for the late evening show to begin, during which they could witness the arrivals of French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos (who just won the César for Best Supporting Actress) and singer Angèle, as well as this season’s recurrent show-goer Cole Sprouse and his model girlfriend Ari Fournier.

Inside the massive room, a giant black rectangle, that stretched from floor to ceiling, dominating the center of the space, illuminated as the show began.

The first models shot out across the space wearing architectural, sharp-shouldered, blazer-like bodysuits mimicking gabardine trench coats (yet knowing Coperni, were they actually technical fabrics imitating traditional cloth?) and classic leather jackets gone rogue. Overall, Coperni kept its signature Parisian cool-girl aesthetic with sleek, narrow shaping and elongated forms.

Worn as clutches, mini-bags were vacuumed into Ziplock-like plastic bags, making them hard to discern. Yet one male model wore his unprotected, revealing that it was in fact made of aerogel, a material used by NASA for satellites to catch stardust. The outer space to-be it-bag only weighs 35 grams and is made of 99% air — anointing Coperni once again as the innovative label in fashion, one that pushes the boundaries of industry design as we know it.

Another couple of emblematic looks; a crushed aluminium mini-skirt topped with a sea-blue, shimmery (like stardust!) knit polo with trailing sleeves, as well as a black backless crepe sheath with a floating feathered ring around the bust. It could even be one of Saturn’s rings!

For the finale, the giant block erupted into bleak, blinding light, like that of a meteorite exploding. The models congregated in a fast-paced walk, like cosmic dust leaking from a comet. A show to remember on Planet Fashion.