Now that was a show. There was naive youth and disaffected youth. There were villains, mermaids, princesses, lightning, fireworks, rats, and Kylie Jenner. For those who dared, the after party included the chance to ride Hyperspace Mountain (epic). When I regretfully exited Disneyland Paris at the stroke of midnight, techno still echoed through the Magic Kingdom. Being part of Fashion Month always feels like inhabiting an alternate (un)reality: this was an extra twist in the wormhole.
Backstage in Cinderella’s banquet hall Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant said they had been prepping for this event, the first fashion show ever held at any Disneyland, for two years. Added Vaillant: “When they first approached us it was to do a small collaboration: Sébastien suggested that maybe we could do a show together at some point. We didn’t realize how huge this would become.”
Disney really delivered on the partnership. The show was held in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle. At the show’s finale the castle was framed with fireworks, spark-sprays, bolts of lightning and more. It seems churlish to mention the rodents we spotted scampering on the drawbridge just before the show started—“Ratatouille,” shouted one benchmate—but uninvited guests in the house of mouse added to the surreal wonder of the moment.
The collection, Coperni’s largest ever, they said, was broadly divided into three narrative sections for the purposes of the show. “We like this idea of fairy tales and the evolution from childhood to adulthood that we can see in the Disney movies in general,” said Vaillant. At the beginning, everything seemed sweet. Ruffle-edged white floral jacquard jackets worn north of bloomers were meant to be a nod to the turn of the 20th century birth of Walt Disney, plus the corporation’s penchant for gothic revival in its castle architecture. Butterflies crafted from organza fluttered on scuba surfaces. Those butterflies signaled a metamorphosis from wide-eyed wonder to slouchy seen-it-alls: park rats. The designers mixed real vintage Disney merch shirts with fresh reinventions—‘Coperni princess’ was my fave, along with a shirt featuring Lumiere the candlestick, scorch marks and the phrase ‘I’ve been burned by you before’—with denim and embroidered shirting. There was a fairytale pair of jeans matched with a house Swipe bag that had both been encrusted, somehow permanently, with salt crystals.