At the fashion house where this writer worked, which retailed Coperni, its popular Swipe bag came in different sizes, among them the viral glass bag. The range also included the Coperni wedge and the Puma x Coperni collaboration. Customers came into the store looking for Swipe bags. Through the employee benefit, I had the opportunity to have a Coperni piece of my own. I mention this because the shop floor offered a particular view of the label, made up of finished products and customers who wanted them, with no sight of what happened upstream.

Barely a week ago, co-founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer announced that Coperni SAS, the French company behind their Paris-based fashion house, was ceasing operations. In a statement posted on Instagram and reported by TheIndustry.fashion, they said that no solution had been reached in their dispute with Tomorrow, the brand’s shareholder and distributor. Vogue Business also reported that the founders confirmed the decision in a personal memo. The announcement followed a public warning in February, when Coperni skipped Paris Fashion Week and said, according to W Magazine, that its relationship with Tomorrow had deteriorated to the point where the brand no longer had the means to support its development.

The public image of the label is easy to list. Founded in 2013 and relaunched in 2018, Coperni staged its spring/summer 2023 show in Paris in September 2022, where a dress was sprayed onto Bella Hadid using liquid fabric technology. Its Swipe bag, modelled on the iPhone’s slide-to-unlock gesture, became a bestseller. It was later reissued in glass through a collaboration with New York-based brand HEVƎN, as well as in materials including gold and meteorite. The Air Swipe, presented for fall/winter 2024, was made from silica aerogel, a solid composed of approximately 99 per cent air. For its spring/summer 2025 show, held on October 1, 2024, Coperni staged a presentation in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Paris, with Kylie Jenner closing the show in a black ballgown.

Behind that image was a business arrangement few of the label’s admirers would have seen. According to nss magazine, Tomorrow, a British wholesale platform, served as Coperni’s licensee, exclusive distributor and majority shareholder. Reports place the beginning of its involvement in either 2018 or 2019. Under the arrangement, Tomorrow collected revenue, paid royalties to the brands in its portfolio and reimbursed expenses beyond design, including the costs of shows and campaigns. Coperni SAS handled day-to-day operations and employed the teams, while a separate entity, Coperni UK Limited, held the licence. This meant that the resources behind Coperni’s public-facing image were tied, in part, to payments and financial arrangements involving Tomorrow.

According to the founders, the arrangement had stopped working. They said Tomorrow had failed to pay revenue shares and reimbursements owed to Coperni, TheIndustry.fashion reported. The brand also alleged that Tomorrow had terminated its licence agreement. In their account, the unpaid amounts left Coperni SAS under severe financial strain even as its international development continued. On June 11, 2026, a Paris court opened judicial reorganisation proceedings for Coperni SAS, placing the company under court protection as it sought a way forward. The opening of these proceedings does not establish the truth of the founders’ allegations, and no court finding on those claims has been reported in the sources reviewed for this article.

Tomorrow’s position is less straightforward to establish. TheIndustry.fashion reported that it had contacted the company for comment, but no response appears in the coverage reviewed for this article. In March 2026, Progetto 11, the holding company of e-commerce platform The Level Group, acquired Tomorrow. Its founder and chief executive, Stefano Martinetto, stepped down following the sale. Progetto 11 offered a different account of the situation, saying it had inherited a business already embroiled in a wider dispute over ownership and governance, without funding, while Coperni’s founders were seeking to regain control, according to nss magazine and Vogue Business. The financial difficulties surrounding Tomorrow were also reflected in its reported 2024 results. Vogue reported that its turnover fell by 34 per cent to £8.4 million, its gross margin declined from 76 per cent to 41 per cent, and its operating losses reached £7.5 million, figures also cited by nss magazine.

Following the acquisition, Coperni’s founders sought to buy the brand back from Progetto 11, TheIndustry.fashion reported. nss magazine later reported that three potential buyers had come forward, but none ultimately secured the brand. The difficulties extended beyond Coperni: Martine Rose, another label in Tomorrow’s portfolio, cancelled production of its fall 2026 collection in March, although no reason was given.

Read together, the reports describe three sets of numbers that can move in different directions. nss magazine, citing data from legal proceedings, reported that Coperni’s market revenue fell from €15.2 million in 2023 to €13 million in 2024 and €10.9 million in 2025. A brand can appear commercially successful in one respect while financial pressure builds elsewhere. In their farewell, the founders thanked their teams, factories, stores and buyers, naming the network of people and businesses that depend on those payments.

From where I stood, Coperni looked like a label people wanted. Customers came looking for its bags, and the store carried pieces ranging from the glass Swipe to its Puma collaboration. None of that told me how money moved between the distributor and the company designing the products, who held the licence or how a show was financed. The opportunity I had to own a Coperni piece through the employee benefit, and the demand I witnessed in the store, offered no insight into the company's accounts. A shop sees one point in a much longer sequence of agreements, payments and production runs. It is within that wider sequence that the reports locate Coperni’s difficulties.

The founders ended their farewell on a note of optimism, saying they had ideas to share. But who now controls the Coperni name, and what becomes of the teams and licensing arrangements attached to it, remain unresolved in the coverage reviewed for this article.

Cover Credit: Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer

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