Coperni

Now that was a show. There was naive youth and disaffected youth. There were villains, mermaids, princesses, lightning, fireworks, rats, and Kylie Jenner. For those who dared, the after party included the chance to ride Hyperspace Mountain (epic). When I regretfully exited Disneyland Paris at the stroke of midnight, techno still echoed through the Magic Kingdom. Being part of Fashion Month always feels like inhabiting an alternate (un)reality: this was an extra twist in the wormhole.

Backstage in Cinderella’s banquet hall Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant said they had been prepping for this event, the first fashion show ever held at any Disneyland Paris, for two years. Added Vaillant: “When they first approached us it was to do a small collaboration: Sébastien suggested that maybe we could do a show together at some point. We didn’t realize how huge this would become.”

Disney really delivered on the partnership. The show was held in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle. At the show’s finale the castle was framed with fireworks, spark-sprays, bolts of lightning and more. It seems churlish to mention the rodents we spotted scampering on the drawbridge just before the show started—“Ratatouille,” shouted one benchmate—but uninvited guests in the house of mouse added to the surreal wonder of the moment.

The collection, Coperni’s largest ever, they said, was broadly divided into three narrative sections for the purposes of the show. “We like this idea of fairy tales and the evolution from childhood to adulthood that we can see in the Disney movies in general,” said Vaillant. At the beginning, everything seemed sweet. Ruffle-edged white floral jacquard jackets worn north of bloomers were meant to be a nod to the turn of the 20th century birth of Walt Disney, plus the corporation’s penchant for gothic revival in its castle architecture. Butterflies crafted from organza fluttered on scuba surfaces. Those butterflies signaled a metamorphosis from wide-eyed wonder to slouchy seen-it-alls: park rats. The designers mixed real vintage Disney merch shirts with fresh reinventions—‘Coperni princess’ was my fave, along with a shirt featuring Lumiere the candlestick, scorch marks and the phrase ‘I’ve been burned by you before’—with denim and embroidered shirting. There was a fairytale pair of jeans matched with a house Swipe bag that had both been encrusted, somehow permanently, with salt crystals.

After a brief mermaid aside the first claps of thunder rang, lightning flashed, and we switched from park visitors to the characters of their imagination. As well as those T-shirts, the designers said around ten per cent of the collection was produced in collaboration with Disney: amongst the most striking pieces were a Maleficent neckline bustier dress and horned hoodie, as well as dresses that incorporated the silhouette of Sleeping Beauty’s tiara. The one-legged looks were cheesily melodramatic: perfect, really. Fully embroidered, then rent apart, two long ragged frocks were meant to echo poor Sleeping Beauty’s most anxious moments.

The transition from darkness to light was signaled by two bodies, one blue, one yellow, that were sheathed in silicone and garlanded with flowers crafted from electrical cable. Bodysuits were hemmed in preposterously volumized crinoline satin hems to create what Meyer called: “modern tech princesses.” One princess carried a new 3D-printed iteration of the swipe—this one by a partner company in Boston that prints its products in a liquid suspension—that will retail for around $500, the least costly iteration yet of Coperni’s totemic tote. “This has been the biggest project of our life,” said Vaillant of tonight’s presentation and collection. It made for the most magical closing moment of a Fashion Month that I can remember.