A towering black obelisk – or perhaps a half-inverted Asterix – loomed above us in the far, distant Aubervillier TV soundstage to which Coperni had transported us as his late-night space. The obelisk (very Kubrick) lit up as John Williams’ The Conversation from Spielberg’s Close Encounters of The Third Kind played.
“The collection is a complete science fiction tribute,” Arnaud Vaillant confirmed backstage. Star-soled shoes left alien footprints under ‘flying saucer’ dresses with Mars Attacks skirts. Cable knits were cut vertically to create a swooshy hyperspace haze. There were space blanket dresses and skirts with a gold layer of silver foil that shed small pieces of space debris as they rotated around the obelisk. The models’ hair was styled as if it had been slicked with Xenomorph slime, and some fantastic articulated faux claws reflected Xenomorph manicures. Faux fur coats and bags in earthy shades of brown and beige were edged with green and blue accents: alien blood. A form-fitting black top and white dress featured a snap-stud pattern that mirrored the charging inputs applied to the future human battery packs in the Matrix films. Models carried micro handbags in Ziploc evidence bags, à la Mulder with an artifact. It came with a white dress with a long sheer skirt under an attached white shirt made of bright white cotton: Scully has gone wild. A clutch bag is modeled after a clipboard folder: literally (almost) the X files.
Any compelling science fiction story – especially one about invasions – requires its Pandora: the scientist who understands what’s going to happen before the rest of us do. Tonight that role was played uncannily well by Professor Ioannis Michaloudis, who explained backstage how he had created a version of Coperni’s emblematic Swipe bag in a mix of 99 percent air and 1 percent silicon-nano-something – apparently a material used by NASA used to “capture stardust.” Fittingly, this was all totally over my head, but the bag looked cool. It was taken to the catwalk by Leon Dame, dressed after Jude Law entered Gattaca.
Although the two cameramen circling the models as they walked (for the stream, of course) were annoyingly distracting IRL, this was otherwise an entertainingly compelling space opera fashion show. The last two dresses were framed in feathered hoops at the shoulder in the shape of Star Trek‘s transporter aura. The truth was here: Coperni has the technology.
