The Coperni Spray on Dress — A Move to Sustainability.

Could the tech behind the Coperni spray on dress fix the ills of the fashion industry?

Together, Coperni and Bella Hadid created a fashion moment which has taken the internet by storm, but the star of the show could be set to add a more environmentally friendly twist to haute couture.

We’ve all seen the clip by now, Bella Hadid walking out in her underwear to stand on a platform, where she was sprayed from neckline to mid-calf. The spray, initially liquid, quickly became matte and dry, transforming into a figure-hugging dress. Neatened up on-runway by the Coperni team, who trimmed the hem and arranged the shoulders, it was hard to imagine that Bella’s outfit had been liquid just moments before.

Fabrican — literally fabric from a can — was the key in this viral moment. One which looks like it will match Alexander McQeen’s 1999 spray paint dress, and Chalayan’s Fall 2000 Ready To Wear, in the nefarious realm of fashion history. But Fabrican has been around long before Coperni’s Spring 2023 show. Founded by Spanish fashion designer and scientist Manel Torres in 2003, Fabrican was initially based at labs in Imperial College London, the idea emerging from Torres’s desire to speed up the slow and laborious process of constructing garments.

The spray is a liquid containing fibres — either cotton or synthetic — suspended in a polymer solution that evaporated on contact with the body. On the Coperni runway, the whole process took around seven minutes, much faster than the hours it would take to cut and sew a pattern from start to finish, but what’s more exciting is what can be done once the dress has been worn. The fabric is able to be turned back into a solution, ready to be reused whenever required. A fact which means that it is — in theory at least — endlessly recyclable. An interesting advance in the push to more sustainable fashion.

Many fashion houses owe their large carbon footprints to overproduction which is, in turn, driven by their treatment of workers. It’s common for garment workers to be paid per garment, rather than by hour, an exploitative practice which keeps costs low, while simultaneously incentivising large amounts of waste. Although slightly unfeasible for now, widespread adoption of technology such as Fabrican could theoretically upheave this model through drastically speeding up production time, making hourly wages the go-to for production and hopefully paving the way for more ethical treatment of garment workers.

“It’s our duty as designers to try new things and show a possible future,” Meyer, designer and creative director, told Vogue Business, and Fabrican does hint at a brighter future for the notoriously eco-unfriendly industry. While many of Fabrican’s uses are more overtly ecological, listing spray-on medical patches and oil spill containment as some of its potential uses, it’s certainly in a position to drive change throughout the fashion sphere., targeting the issues which plague it deeply.