CORONAVIRUS + ITALY
The Disease's Effect On Italian Fashion
The Coronavirus is here. We all know that.
But what many don’t know is that this virus has chased the fashion world from Milan to Paris & beyond, leaving everything from empty fashion shows to empty storefronts in its wake.
Twice a year, fashion houses from all over the world parade their newest ready-to-wear collections down the runways for all to see, with a gaggle of buyers and fashion reporters close behind. This year, however, high-profile clients, influencers, and other assorted fashionistas found themselves in Milan during the city’s time as the new ground zero for a virus that has since swept the globe.
The final leg of this latest month-long fashion tour began in Paris on February 24, when confirmed Coronavirus cases there totaled just 14. Fast-forward to the final day of Paris fashion week…cases exploded totaling over 200, and gatherings of over 5,000 people in confined spaces were completely banned.
Fashion houses were forced to hand out face masks before shows, several high-profile buyers and fashion editors left Paris early, and some didn’t even bother to come at all – Louis Vuitton’s and Chanel’s U.S. communications teams were told to stay home. The more heavily-attended shows brought in just over 1,000 guests (not that high of a number, considering what fashion houses have drawn in past years), and one show this season even took place inside a sealed plastic tube – a rather timely (if purely un-funny) metaphor for a show in a petri dish.
The only things that remained decidedly UN-contained were the rumors. Miu Miu’s show is cancelled! (Whisper whisper…) LVMH chartered Bernard Arnault’s personal plane to transport Louis Vuitton’s bags from disease-ridden Italy to less-infected France! (Whisper whisper…)
Whatever the gossip may be, a more-than-valid question, regardless of disease, has now risen to the forefront: are fashion shows still worthy of taking up a whole month? They’re expensive, labor-intensive, and sorry-not-sorry: becoming wholly ineffective. Even Anna Wintour admitted to having to rethink the future and initiate a “radical reset.“ How about we start digitizing shows for the You-Tube culture? How about we increase the buy-now-wear-now idea and cut out A LOT of middle men?
Fashion classicists will lambaste us for this supposed fashion blasphemy, but hey – the music industry eventually fell into formation, right? Why can’t fashion be the next to follow?
Long story short, the fashion world has needed to update its ways for a LONG time. It’s just scary that it took a disease to drive the point home.
