Coperni shuts down after its founders' dispute with backer Tomorrow

French brand Coperni is closing. Founders Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant announced on 4 November that Coperni SAS, their Paris design studio, will cease operations, The Business of Fashion reported.

Why

• Coperni says its majority shareholder and distributor, London-based Tomorrow Ltd, stopped paying licensing fees, making it impossible to fund the studio.
• The brand had sought new backers in recent months under a bankruptcy procedure supervised by French courts; according to Puck, a Paris court granted it protection in June.
• Coperni sat out the last two fashion weeks after relations with Tomorrow broke down.

“We have tried everything to preserve Coperni and find a resolution to the conflict,” the founders said, adding that no solution could be found.

Tomorrow’s situation

Tomorrow, which also produces and distributes Martine Rose and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, was sold in June to Progetto 11, the holding company of Italian e-commerce firm The Level Group. It is unclear whether the new owners will try to keep using the Coperni name, BoF noted.

A short, bright run

Over eight years Coperni became known for tech-meets-fashion runway moments — most famously the dress sprayed onto Bella Hadid live on the catwalk. Puck notes that brand-accelerator models built on shared back-office resources still struggle to scale small, wholesale-dependent labels in a difficult market.