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Bella Hadid Has White Dress Spray-Painted Onto Her Body During Coperni Fashion Show

By Margherita Cole on October 4, 2022

bella hadid closing coperni ss23, wearing a spray-on dress created live on runway. iconic! pic.twitter.com/nqSLqibfr0

— DUDA (@saintdemie) September 30, 2022

Fashion history was made at the Coperni Spring Summer 2023 show on Friday, September 30. American model Bella Hadid stepped out onto the runway to close the event, wearing only her underwear and a strappy pair of heels. Then, a team of painters appeared from the sidelines and went to work on spraying her body with Fabrican—a type of synthetic fiber material that can be delivered through a spray gun device. After a few mesmerizing minutes of watching the material solidify before the audience's eyes, Hadid was covered in a white, midi-length dress that looked as though it were sewn on.

Many people have compared Coperni's “instant” dress to Alexander McQueen's Spring Summer 1998 fashion show, where model Shalom Harlow, clad in a ruffled white frock, was sprayed with black and yellow paint by robots. Though different, both of these iconic moments stunned the crowd with their creativity and presentation. Hadid played an integral role in the process, standing before the audience in a statuesque pose as the painters carefully created the dress on her body. Once the fabric solidified, another team member stepped forward to clean up the garment by adjusting the sleeves and adding a slit down the center.

Next, it was up to Hadid to prove to the audience that the display was not just a magic trick and that the material sprayed onto her body indeed transformed into a fiber material. She walked down the runway, turning a couple of times to showcase the formfitting dress. Coperni designers Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillan wrote, “To you, women who transcend your body and never lower your gaze before the barbed wire of morality.”