Bella-Hadid-Coperni
PARIS, FRANCE – SEPTEMBER 30:  Bella Hadid walks the runway during the Coperni Womenswear Spring/Summer 2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on September 30, 2022 in Paris, France. (Photo by Pierre Suu/Getty Images)

Almost a year to the day since Coperni’s viral Spring/Summer 2023 runway show, the French luxuriate has shared a behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the hours leading up to the moment they shocked the world by spraying a dress onto Bella Hadid.

Aptly titled “The Making Of A Dress”, the short film lifts the curtains on the hours of preparation—which, for the 26-year-old supermodel, were only two—the backstage theatrics and the craftsmanship leading up to this now-iconic performance.

At the time of the show, Hadid wrote in an Instagram caption praising Coperni’s co-founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer that the dramatic moment was: “No rehearsal, no nothing, just passion.”

Now, the magnitude of Hadid’s talent and Coperni’s deft aptitude for setting the benchmark of style has truly been realised with this unseen footage.

The eight-minute documentary begins the night before Coperni’s Paris Fashion Week show, with the prestige brand’s team of creatives rehearsing the coup de théâtre with Manel Torres’s spray-on textile fabric.

They map out the silhouette of the dress on the spot, determining whether to include a train, how best to fold the straps into a draped off-the-shoulder accent and (most importantly), perfecting the timing so Hadid’s dress dries onto her figure.

Later, we see Hadid arrive on set to practice the grand finale. As the show began at 9PM, Hadid was only alerted to the optics of the moment two hours before she was set to take the stage. Arriving at 6PM, Hadid was rushed to the runway where she was guided through the choreography.

“I’ll have to go like this, but I’ll have to be quick,” Coperni head of design, Charlotte Raymond Silberstein, explained to Hadid in the video, gesticulating how she would mould the dress directly onto her body.

“But guys… what do you mean?! I thought it’s paint,” Hadid questioned.

You can imagine her shock and delight upon finding out the textile scientists will actually spray fabric onto her, or you can just watch the moment for yourself below.

Watch Bella Hadid in Coperni’s “The Making Of A Dress” below:

According to fashion aggregator Launchmetrics, videos capturing Hadid’s spray-on dress generated $26.3 million in media impact value. According to WWD, who first reported the figure, Bella Hadid “had generated $1 million by Sunday evening and more than 2.8 million likes,” on her post alone. Talk about splashing cash…