Parisian ready-to-wear fashion brand Coperni openly wears an affinity for emblems of yesterday’s youth. Take for example the label’s CD-PLAYER Swipe Bag revealed late last year, a design referencing that all too brief period when digital innovations had yet to completely define the populace’s still predominately analog lifestyle. Their newest creation – the Coperni x Transparent Speaker Jacket Blasts Nostalgia – turns up the volume of nostalgia to another level.
Revealed during the Paris Fashion Week, the avant-garde 70s-era inspired leather jacket was conceived by Coperni’s co-founders Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant only two months ahead of the label’s runway show. Transparent, a Swedish sound company known for its minimalist see-though high-fi speakers, was earmarked as a source of inspiration for Coperni’s SS24 collection, inspiring the co-founders to reach out to the audio brand with the offer to work together to turn a mood into the fashion label’s most captivating piece.
Coperni showcased their Spring/Summer collection, including the Coperni x Transparent Speaker Jacket, within IRCAM, the music and technology research center housed within the Centre Pompidou.
Designing a jacket with built-in speakers seems like a straightforward sew-on task. In reality the concept presented a unique set of challenges in order to achieve the desired balance between a jacket with the ergonomics of a truly wearable garment with the properties of an acoustically capable speaker system.
The foundational audio components would be sourced from Transparent’s smallest existing speaker, the Light Speaker.
Multiple rounds of prototyping and fittings with 3D-printed models were required to reach a suitable functional design, with each speaker driver secured using Transparent’s signature black screws. Cable clutter is an undesirable presence across a desk or within a living room, but unthinkable for a fashion piece. Thus, Transparent and Coperni carefully concealed connections to an amplifier nestled in one front pocket and a battery pack in the other within the jacket’s lining, completing the one-off design.
Coperni’s Transparent jacket is the manifestation of the dialogue between fashion and technology happening today, offering a glimpse into the future how wearable technology might become a true statement piece, both heard and seen.
For more information on both brands, visit coperniparis.com and transpa.rent.
