If you don’t create a bit of drama, participating in Fashion Week is meaningless. Not long ago, the spray-painted dress showcased by Bella Hadid for the French brand Coperni at Paris Fashion Week immediately caused a huge response worldwide after the show ended, with almost all domestic and foreign media platforms reporting on the impressive aspects of the spray-painted dress.
According to the fashion industry data marketing analysis platform Launchmetrics, the impact of this live performance in media communication has created a virtual value of up to 26.3 million US dollars. It can be said that Coperni’s experimental attempt has successfully increased the brand’s visibility. The fairy godmother behind this magical moment is the Spanish fiber technology company Fabrican, founded by scientist Manel Torres. The mysterious white spray paint incorporates cotton and synthetic fibers into a polymer solution that evaporates upon contact with the skin, leaving the fibers on the body. Coperni’s design duo, Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer, stated after the show that although this dress will not be mass-produced, as designers, their responsibility is to do something innovative on the runway to fill the future with more imagination. Sébastien Meyer said in an interview, “It was a beautiful moment, an experience that triggers emotions.”
When asked if the use of spray painting was a tribute to Alexander McQueen, the Coperni designer stated that the two are completely different.
The technology of Coperni’s spray-painted dress is not the most cutting-edge, and constructing or deconstructing a piece of clothing on the spot is not a novel gimmick, but Coperni has succeeded because it aligns with the tradition of dramatic interpretation in fashion shows. However, in addition to Coperni’s spray-painted dress, there have actually been many experimental and eccentric pieces in the fashion world over the years, which we will introduce to you one by one:
Balloons turned into fashionable skirts on the T-stage
Worked at the top design company Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga in Paris.
Fredrik Tjærandsen created a series of clothes with giant balloons as the main axis in his 2019 graduate collection.
In this collection, models wore rubber dresses covered by giant balloons and slowly deflated the balloons on the catwalk, presenting a shocking visual effect and also becoming one of the focuses on social media.
“My inspiration comes from my own early childhood memories. I want to recreate those vague memories. These inflated ‘bubbles’ are a manifestation of the blurred memories of humans. When the balloons appear on the runway, they awaken a kind of dream. And the balloons, by contracting, bring out our own awakening to the present consciousness.”
Joan of Arc, the fearless female figure in McQueen’s heart
British genius designer Alexander McQueen’s designs often express emotions and the energy of nature in a wild way. His runway shows are like a poetic dark fairy tale world.
In 1998, Alexander McQueen held a fashion show for his autumn and winter collection at a bus station in London. The collection was themed around “Joan of Arc”. The clothing featured a lot of elements such as chains and armor, alluding to Joan’s deeds and misfortunes.
At the end of the show, a model dressed in a red bead-studded long dress, playing the role of Joan, stepped onto the stage. The blazing flames around her recreated the moment when Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, expressing hysterical anger in red and black.
The model, dressed in a blood-red dress, also interpreted McQueen’s image of a woman: determined, fearless, and powerful.
A Dress That Dissolves in Water
Hussein Chalayan, a fashion designer who graduated from Central Saint Martins, is known in the industry as a British fashion genius and the successor to the avant-garde art movement.
As long as you are familiar with the fashion world, you must have heard of Hussein Chalayan’s name.
Hussein Chalayan is known for his unique tailoring and stunning materials, and his passion for high technology has also made him famous in the fashion industry. Lauren Goldstein, a fashion editor for TIME magazine, commented on Hussein Chalayan, saying: “He explores areas that others do not, choosing pragmatism over fashion and design over luxury.” Hussein Chalayan’s designs have transcended the clothing itself. Unlike the cliché of praising a designer’s work as an art piece, what he is doing is more like creating art pieces that resemble clothing.
In 2015, at Hussein Chalayan’s experimental Paris Fashion Week show, two models wore dresses made of a special water-soluble material. As they passed through a rain curtain in the center of the stage, the dresses dissolved upon contact with water, revealing the black and white printed dresses that were hidden underneath.
Watching that fashion show not only provided the audience with an extremely avant-garde visual feast, but also allowed people to see the multifaceted creativity of the fashion industry.
Since Alessandro Michele took office, Gucci has launched a series of collections every season that are quite spectacular. In Gucci’s 2018 autumn and winter show, it once again made everyone feel what is called imagination, because even the operating room can be moved into the show!
The show was divided into several small rooms, each with an operating table, and the pale lake blue color of the scene was a bit eerie. The details of the layout, such as the PVC on the walls and floors, the fireproof doors, the LED lights, and the neatly arranged plastic chairs in the waiting room, really gave a sense of tension. The sound of heartbeats and other warning sounds in the operating room were interspersed, making it feel like waiting for a special “operation”. Alessandro Michele collaborated with the Makinarium factory in Rome, which is famous for creating special visual effects. These highly realistic human heads were made using 3D printing and scanning technology over a period of six months.
In addition to human heads and eyes, there are also hands holding various animals. There are Gucci’s iconic snakes, chameleons, and alien-like little dragons. If you don’t look closely, you might really think these are all real.
Every fashion show by the eccentric designer Rick Owens always captures people’s attention, from using strong dancers to models revealing private parts, various outrageous actions are as “famous” as his works.
Rick Owens successfully grabbed the headlines of Paris Fashion Week in the 2016 Spring/Summer fashion show. Models carried “human backpacks,” with two models’ bodies entwined, performing acrobatics such as “hanging upside down” on a maze-like runway, making it the most controversial topic in the fashion industry.
Behind the seemingly strange, interesting, and avant-garde “acrobatics” lies an important message. As the final part of the show, the “human backpack” with its masculine theme interprets the beauty of feminism, turning the shackles that bind women into a weapon to showcase female strength and beauty.
Rick Owens stated: “Bandages can be both restrictive and supportive and protective. In the designer’s inspiration, it is the bond of love.”
As the first fashion designer to apply 3D printing technology, Iris Van Herpen’s design language is inspired by microorganisms, sound waves, or crystal structures, shock particles… In 2011, Iris captured the moment of water splashing and wore it on the model, which was rated as one of the greatest inventions of the year by Time magazine.
A solidified water sculpture suspended in mid-air, hard and transparent, this acrylic material is not as malleable as fabric and even the designer cannot precisely control the shape of the splashing water.
Iris Van Herpen once said: “Fashion can add value to this world, it is timeless. When a person wears (interesting) clothes, they can create a very exciting and important form of self-expression.”
British genius designer Alexander McQueen’s “VOSS” collection from 2001 is perhaps one of his most iconic shows.
The entire show is composed of a box background made up of many mirrors, separating the models and the audience into two worlds. The models are bandaged in the glass runway, facing the most fear of the unknown. Each model performs a monologue on the runway.
They dance wildly in front of the group of mirrors, unable to observe all the movements outside in the first moment. If it were not for the runway show, those people in the show would be tortured to death by their own psychological pressure.
The most eye-catching moment is at the end of the show, when a glass box in the center of the room suddenly falls and shatters. Inside is a naked British writer, wearing a gas mask hooked up to various pipes, with moths flying around her. The whole show ends in a shocking, crazy, and bizarre way.
These surreal designs and ideas walk the line between “meaning” and “fun,” forming an important part of the designer’s narrative. Many people may exclaim that they increasingly don’t understand fashion, is that clothing? The answer varies from person to person. What’s important is that they challenge the stereotype of “clothing should be like this.” Whether it’s spraying a skirt onto a nearly naked model or gathering 68 sets of twin models for a show, as the brilliant designer Glenn Martens said: “If we don’t create a bit of drama, participating in Fashion Week is meaningless!”
