Paris Fashion Week has an Instagram-first brand. Rather than spending money on a fashion show, Coperni’s Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant have created an Instagram experience modeled on the Choose Your Own Adventure books. (For millennial nonreaders, the Choose Your Own Adventure series was the progenitor of Netflix’s recent Black Mirror: Bandersnatch episode). The designers see the account—handle: @copernize_your_life—as an efficient, modern way to spread the word about their revived label. Also, they’re making clothes for “real life”—suits, shirting, knits, tees, and dresses—so it makes sense to put the garments in situations their customers might actually encounter (like running for a train, attending a work meeting, or swiping right on Tinder), rather than showing them on a traditional catwalk. Models Hanne Gaby Odiele and Teddy Quinlivan do star in the opening clips—choose Hanne Gaby if you’re a Type A, Teddy if you’re Type B—but otherwise it’s a cast of fashion professional amateurs: Their PR person and stylist make appearances, as do Paris- and New York–based editors, consultants, and other arbiters. The project is clever, and, as they say in the business, highly clickable.
As for the non-virtual aspects of this comeback—the clothes—they looked smart, too. During their two years at Courrèges, Meyer and Vaillant pitched items rather than total looks, paring them back to their essence without stripping them of identifiable traits. That cool, minimal sensibility carried through here, but the clothes weren’t dull or boring. One of the collection’s motifs was trompe l’œil; they cut into coats and jackets to create the illusion of three-dimensional collars, lapels, and flap pockets. Their other theme was vortexes: A wool coat featured many of them, like polka dots with depth (more of that cutting away), and a T-shirt dress was printed with their lower case “c” logo in a swirling vortex pattern. If any of this sounds tricky, it wasn’t. Meyer and Vaillant’s work is precise, and thanks to their efforts to keep prices low enough for the friends they want to dress, many of the pieces will be less expensive than they look.
Meyer and Vaillant have gone the heritage-house-creative-director route, and, having come out the other side, are charting a new way forward. Are fashion shows necessary? Are designer collections just too expensive? Does Instagram success convert into real-life success? For the answers to these questions, these are two young men the industry should be watching.
