Art, Fashion, and the Body
Charlotte Cebula
Bella Hadid in Coperni show, PFW 2022
Walking through the “Heavenly Bodies” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art one sweltering summer in New York City, transfixed by the dazzling mannequins, I was overcome with a profound sense of comfort and belonging. The Met, a museum where I spent countless hours roaming as a child, represented the pinnacle of art to me. The Met’s integration of fashion into its exhibition space affirmed my love of style; no longer was my interest in fashion a pursuit to keep up with trends and fit in with girls my age, it became my artistic outlet.
There is a long historical precedent for the interweaving of art and fashion. If you are a fan of art history, you may be familiar with Renaissance artist Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych that depicts the Christian story of creation through colorful, unsettling images. Elite fashion houses and designers, such as Valentino and Alexander McQueen, paid homage to Bosh’s work in their own designs. Yves Saint Laurent produced a cocktail dress collection inspired by Piet Mondrian’s art, emphasizing distinct colors and sharp lines. The interplay between painters and fashion designers illustrates the blurred line between different categories of art; one cannot exist without the other.
It is for this reason that the Coperni show provoked such deep thought when I came across the viral video of the spray-on dress. For those who have yet to see the video, here is a synopsis: Bella Hadid (a well-known supermodel) walks to a stage wearing a G-string and holding her breasts. She stands as two assistants spray a white substance over her body. After it dries, a woman cuts a slit on the “dress” and coarsely styles it. Hadid struts down a catwalk as the crowd is stunned. The dress is made from Fabrican, a liquid fiber invented in 2003 by Dr. Manel Torres. The Coperni designers, Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillan, perfectly integrated science, technology, art, and fashion in this piece. Now that fashion has taken on new mediums, perhaps the distinction between technology, fashion, and art may become obscured.
I would be remiss to avoid noting the importance of the human body as an integral part of fashion, and more specifically the Coperni dress. Hadid’s body was not only the canvas, but the dress itself. The Fabrican created an opaque veil, but the shape of the dress was simply the shape of Hadid’s body. If we praise the Coperni dress for its aesthetic value, are we not just praising Hadid for her figure? Hadid, a model lauded for her conformation to western standards of beauty and slimness, IS the Coperni dress.
If we praise the Coperni dress for its aesthetic value, are we not just praising Hadid for her figure? Hadid, a model lauded for her conformation to western standards of beauty and slimness, IS the Coperni dress.
Critically thinking about the role of the human body as a vessel for fashion opened up a Pandora’s box of questions for me. Had Hadid not been selected as the model for the Coperni show, would the dress have garnered the same attention? How would a plus size model change the reception of the dress? Would the dress be a statement on body size, rather than technology and fashion? How is slimness itself considered a form of art? To these questions, I may not have all the answers, but I think it’s important to consider how the model’s figure is an aspect of the clothes they wear.