It is often the case nowadays that, when you have a bizarre condition such as an autoimmune disease, you don't get taken seriously. In some cases, doctors are left puzzled by the symptoms, while your friends and family get tired of you sulking around moaning about mysterious pains and body mutations that may win you multiple roles in "The Good Doctor" and in "American Horror Story". Then a celebrity, prominent model or influencer, somebody certainly more famous and usually more beautiful than you, claims they have the same condition and, suddenly, it becomes a global issue. Rather than feeling vindicated, though, you feel even more alone as the attention is not reserved to the condition per se, but to the famous person who has it. So, you're left with that line from the Pet Shop Boy's track "Love etc" that says "Don't have to be beautiful, but it helps".
This line may have been resounding in the minds of some of us after seeing Coperni's S/S 23 show, that took place during Paris Fashion Week. The finale revolved around an idea launched 12 years ago, but at the time considered as rather nerdish - spray-on designs. Yet the public opinion seems to have shown much more interest now that the spray-on design is on Bella Hadid.
At the end of the runway, the model came out in a thong and stood on a platform with her arm across her bosom. Spanish Manel Torres, the inventor of Fabrican, a spray-on fabric, and a colleague, sprayed Hadid with a white substance that became white and instantly solidified.
Towards the end of the process that lasted several minutes and that many compared to the finale for Alexander McQueen's "No. 13" catwalk show (S/S 1999) with robotic arms spraying in black and yellow a white cotton muslin dress donned by Shalom Harlow (View this photo), while others thought it was an eureka moment akin to the spray on shoes (that can't come off once you've sprayed them on...) in the animated film "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", a collaborator of the Coperni duo came out, cut away at the hem, opened a slit in the dress and rearranged the shoulders. Then Hadid took to the runway in her newly sculpted body-con dress.
The moment went obviously viral, but it wasn't certainly new if you are a fashion/textile/technology researcher. Spanish fashion designer and scientist Manel Torres started developing the spray-on concept in the early 2000, winning multiple awards with it.
Twelve years ago, as an academic visiting London's Imperial College, Torres worked on the material with Paul Luckham, a professor of particle technology at the college.
The inspiration for this liquid mixture didn't actually come from technology but from felt, a dense, non-woven fabric without any warp or weft made from matted and compressed fibers.
Torres wanted to create a liquid mixture hoping to come up a futuristic and seamless material liquid and, while looking for a way to bind the fibers together, he started running experiments with short fibers (ranging from natural, such as wool and linen, to synthetic) mixed with polymers to bind them together and a solvent that delivered the fabric in liquid form.
He eventually came up with Fabrican, a spray-on fabric available in different colours that can be applied using a high-pressure spray gun or an aerosol can (the solvent evaporates when the spray touches the surface).
The fabric is formed by cross-linking fibers, which cling to one another to create the garment. The texture of the fabric changes according to the short fibers employed and to how the spray is layered on the body.
The principle behind this material is the same one behind kids' ribbon spray streamers, but the effect is very similar to those colloidal silver and hyaluronic acid sprays you use for wounds, the main difference being that the latter have a powdery consistency, while Torres' mixture is more elastic.
Originally the mixture was developed at London's Imperial College and designs made with this technique were showed in September 2010 at the Science in Style fashion show at the college.
The results were a bit nerdish, with some geometrical twists added, but, while Anna Wintour may have not appreciated the effort, the designs created by Torres showed potential especially considering the innovative uses of this non-flammable material not just in fashion and design, but in medicine (it is a sterile material because it comes out of an aerosol can, besides, the material may be infused with drugs and transformed into a medicated patch) or in the industrial field as well (Fabrican may be used to clean an oil spill in the sea, for example, as it can float and absorb the oil).
There are definitely some pros behind this material as the fabric can be peeled off, washed and worn again or returned to its liquid form and then reused to create another garment (among the cons there is the fact that most of us wouldn't have three people to spray us on and create a perfect dress...).
After a few shows and after being included in the 2011 exhibition "The Power of Making" at London's Victoria & Albert Museum, the spray-on material disappeared from the scene, maybe because Torres still had to finish developing it because it had a very pungent smell, something that the researcher may still want to work on as, according to people who were at the Coperni show, the synthetic smell filled the Musée des Arts et Métiers' Salle des Textiles.
Now, while the spray-on dress went viral, it also overshadowed the rest of the collection and that was a bit of a shame as there were a few technological twists in some of the designs as well.
Named Coperni Femme, the collection was an ode to femininity, with asymmetric lingerie dresses, tailored jackets combined with biker jackets evoking Trinity's look in "The Matrix", that also inspired a dress with a slashed neckline borrowed from Fiona Johnson's red glitch gown in the film.
Coperni's Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant also designed two dresses that incorporated thousands of glass pieces, a 1 kg 18-karat gold version of the designers' Swipe bag (made by Italian goldsmith Gabriele Veneri) intended to be melted down after the show and Frankenstein's dresses made of spiraling panels (a technique reminiscent of a 1974 Courrèges dress that unzipped in a spiral from hem to neck) that were linked with a metal thread akin to surgical staples.
There were more technological references in the collection (Meyer is the geek of the duo): the square shoulders on a cropped trench and bomber were inspired by the block-shaped avatars on game platform Roblox and designs with turquoise or fuchsia flowers on a black background were the result of a long process. To make them, the designers recorded a video of flowers blossoming and then printed the images on different layers to create a lenticular fabric integrating a hologram.
Time will tell if in future we will go around in spray-on clothes as researchers will probably need a few more years to turn the material into something more commercial.
So, what's the final lesson from this presentation? Oh no, it's not just the fact that this show proved that even a nerdish idea can go viral when the execution involves a famous supermodel.
The real lesson is that, if you think you may have created a genuinely innovative material but nobody seems to have noticed, keep on researching and improving it. One day, the rest of the world will eventually catch up with you, just as it happened with Torres.
Comments