Coperni, the Paris brand behind Bella Hadid’s spray-on dress and a string of viral runway moments, has shut down. Co-founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer confirmed it on November 4, 2026, in a personal note shared with Vogue Business.
Their main partner stopped paying them. They couldn’t regain control of the brand. After months of trying to fix it, they closed.
Who was the partner?
Since around 2019, Tomorrow Ltd owned most of Coperni and handled selling the clothes to stores. That gave the founders scale and reach, and it also meant Tomorrow controlled both ownership and cash flow.
According to the founders, Tomorrow stopped paying money Coperni says it was owed, and ended the agreement that underpinned how the brand operated. Without that income, the label and its team were under serious pressure.
How we got here
- March: Tomorrow was sold to Progetto 11 / Level Group. Vaillant and Meyer tried to buy Coperni back.
- Same period: They cancelled their Fall/Winter 2026 Paris Fashion Week show.
- June: A Paris court put Coperni under protection so it could keep operating while looking for a way out.
- October: Three offers came in to take over the company. None resolved the conflict with Tomorrow.
- Today: The founders say Coperni has ceased operations.
What the founders said
“These eight years have been extraordinary,” they wrote. “Coperni has always been a collective adventure, and we are immensely proud of what we have created.”
They thanked the French fashion federation, stores, buyers, press, celebrities and models who backed them.
And they are not treating this as the end of their work: “As the world becomes increasingly challenging, particularly in the fashion industry, we believe there is still so much to create and reinvent. Innovation has always been our passion. We look ahead with optimism and plenty of ideas, and cannot wait to share them with you.”
Why Coperni mattered
Meyer and Vaillant met while working at Courrèges, founded Coperni around 2018, and built a reputation for shows people actually remembered: the 2022 spray-on dress on Bella Hadid, robots on the runway, a show staged like a gaming arena. Pieces like the Swipe bag kept the brand commercially present beyond the spectacle.
That mix is why the closure lands. Coperni proved a young label could win global attention without a heritage name. It also showed that attention alone does not protect you when the structure behind the brand breaks down.
What you can learn from this
Coperni is not the only label from Tomorrow’s group that hit trouble this year. Martine Rose said earlier she could not produce a collection for reasons outside her control. For designers and fashion students, the useful points are practical:
1. Visibility is not a safety net.
A viral moment can put you everywhere overnight. It does not cover salaries, production or rent if the money behind the brand stops moving.
2. Ownership is the real foundation.
Before you sign with a partner, be clear on who owns the brand name and the designs, and what happens if that partner is sold. Otherwise you may find you have built something you no longer control.
3. Trace how you get paid.
If another company sells your work and remits money later, know the exact terms: how much, how often, and what you can do when payments stop. Informal arrangements fail under pressure.
4. Support can become dependence.
A partner can open stores, production and funding faster than a small studio can alone. The same setup can strand you if they stop paying, get sold, or end the deal. Build those scenarios into the agreement from the start.
5. Keep an exit path.
If someone else owns most of your brand, can you buy it back, at what price, and under what conditions? Coperni’s founders tried and still could not resolve the conflict cleanly.
6. The work outlives the company.
Labels close. The people, craft and ideas do not have to. The founders say they still have ideas to share. That part continues.
None of this means avoid partners. It means go in with clear terms. The clothes get the headlines. The contracts decide whether the label survives.
What comes next
For now, Coperni as a company has stopped. Vaillant and Meyer have not announced a new project, but they say they have ideas and plan to share them. Whatever comes next will be closely watched.
Source: founders’ memo as reported by Vogue Business, November 4, 2026.
