During the latest fashion weeks, some designers opted to go minimal and strip shows of theatrical moments, re-shifting the attention on the actual clothes; others, instead, attempted to step into the future and did so with a high-tech stunt.
The Coperni duo had a spray-on dress that went viral on their S/S 23 runway; but, for the new collection, Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant explored the possibilities offered by robots.
For the new show, staged at the Théâtre National de la Danse during Paris Fashion Week, the duo recruited five Boston Dynamics robot "Spot" dogs and employed them to restage Jean de la Fontaine's brutal "Le Loup et l'Agneau" (The Wolf and the Lamb), replacing the main characters in the fable with robots and humans and giving the story a new ending.
Capelets (for that Red Riding Hood twist...) abounded in a variety of fabrics, including bi-coloured nylon and tweed. Gustave Doré's illustration for the fable, featuring a robo-dog instead of the wolf, was turned into a toile de jouy effect on a shirt and a dress.
Leather trousers incorporated untrimmed off-cut leather skirts and there were more skirts and dresses with an irregular hem. An oversized hand-shaped brooch that called to mind an emoji, used to pinch the fabric in strategic places on tops and dresses, represented a surreal moment, while a real-life handbag was shaped after the iPhone emoji.
A faux fur coat gave out a wolf vibe (and was rebalanced at the end of the show by a faux lamb fur vest and mini-dress...), while a leather mini-dress with a ripped hem looked as if it may have been longer, but had been dramatically shortened during a brutal fight with an animal, and seemed a metaphor for an empowered Red Riding Hood turned huntress.
Model Rianne Van Rompaey interacted with a Spot dog mounted with a robotic arm on the top of its body. They seemed to kiss while many in the audience and at home must have dreaded disaster and a robot going crazy and ripping her face apart. Luckily, the robo apocalypse didn't happen, but the Spot dog grabbed her blanket jacket, tore it off and then gave it back to her.
This conclusion rewrote the original fable in a more positive key to show people that humans and machines can live in harmony, unlocking the second part of the collection.
After this interlude, the show shifted indeed to the more technologically driven designs, from densely furry coats and tops in light reactive recycled nylon (70% of the collection was recycled) made in collaboration with fashion school Les Arts Decoratifs, to leather jackets featuring human paintings of a robot and a lamb generated with AI text-to-image software DALL-E and the brand's signature Swipe bag made for the occasion with a 55,000-year-old meteorite found in 1968 in the South of France and carved in 2023 (the bag appeared in previous runways sculpted in glass and gold).
In this part of the show a robot also held onto Lila Moss' mini Swipe painted bag, before giving it back as she passed by, and, at the end of the show, the machines took a bow.
So, what's the verdict on the robotic stunt? Though eye catching thanks to their vibrant yellow shade, the robots looked unsettling to many commentators who took to Instagram to note that similar models of robots can get mounted with a machine gun and be turned into a lethal weapon.
Yet there was nothing to fear in this case: Boston Dynamics mainly makes two types of robots, Stretch and Spot. The former is used in warehouse operations, while Spot can be used for a variety of applications.
Fit with an Artificial Intelligence that the company calls "athletic intelligence", Spot can walk, climb stairs, avoid obstacles, traverse difficult terrain, and autonomously follow preset routes with little or no input from users, as the company's site explains. This agile machine is ideal for inspection tasks and can be used in emergencies to gather insights in dangerous areas, inspect gauges machinery and pipes. Fitted with a snake-like arm, it can grasp, lift and carry a variety of materials and items, flip levers, turn valves and manipulate objects (last year Spot robots were also sent to Ukraine to help nonprofit demining enterprise Halo Trust to clean up mines).
Boston Dynamics highlights on its site that their products are designed for industrial and commercial use and that they are available for sale for commercial, industrial, enterprise and university research uses, but they are not intended for purchase by individuals for non-commercial use.
Police and fire departments are using Spot to get remote visibility into potentially dangerous situations and remote inspections of hazardous environments. Besides, police departments use Spot to inspect suspicious packages and environments for hazardous materials or explosives, assess hostile threats remotely, and to search structurally dangerous environments in emergency response scenarios.
Spot is not designed to conduct mass surveillance, or to replace police officers and the company's policy specifically does not authorize the use of these robots as weapons. All buyers are indeed prohibited from such use, besides the policy also prohibits weaponizing Boston Dynamics' robots. The Coperni duo decided to work with them after reading the company's pledge not to mount weapons on their machines.
That said, while nobody watching the show live or following it online, expected the robots to create 15 yards of delicate bobbin lace in 15 seconds, it looked like the interactions were limited and to have the robots grabbing a garment or holding a handbag was a bit like Bezos spending a lot of money for an 11-minute suborbital flight. In a nutshell, a waste of the most advanced technology.
McQueen's robotic stunt entered the fashion legend because it had a purpose, showing a creative interaction between machines and humans, with the robots from the automotive industry reinvented as fashion designers and painters. Sure, there was a lot of work to do here as well to coordinate the choreography and the robots had to practice for weeks at Boston Dynamics's HQ, choreographed by dancer and movement director Eric Christison remotely from Paris. But at the same time, there was no real creative purpose behind this interaction.
Besides, the clothes became secondary, so that the reflective light garments, a mini-dress covered in metallic feathers and perfectly wearable and desirable long wool and leather coats, went largely unseen, overshadowed by the viral moment.
It feels that nowadays the Internet buzz is everything, the Instagrammable moment is indeed what makes or breaks you and it is all you need to quickly grab people's attention in between cute cat videos.
Coperni claim their technological interventions are part of their fashion experience, they represent moments that introduce innovation and help them getting attention and increase sales. Bets are open to what they will do next (mind you, they sounded enthusiastic about their experiments with AI, so maybe they will investigate this possibility further), yet fewer distractions from the garments and a bit more focus on the textile research that went into them wouldn't be a bad idea.
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