During the start of the lockdown, when the cancellation/postponement of the June fashion shows was announced, the future of the fashion shows was questioned several times. During the Vogue Global Conversations, the series of talks organized by Vogue during quarantine, on the first day, Marc Jacobs answered a question of British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, in which he asked him during the live streaming on Zoom, how he would have presented his spring / summer 2021 collection: “I don’t even know if there will be a s/s collection”. Accusing the quarantine of having impacted creativity, considering impossible to create a collection without being able to travel and touch fabrics or work with your team in the same room.
On April 21, roughly a month after the lockdown, London announced its first edition of the digital fashion week. And so it was from 12 to 14 June 2020.
Then followed the announcement of men’s fashion week (9-13 July) and Haute Couture (6-8 July) in Paris which preceded Milan for the first time compared to the usual calendar which sees Paris as the last of the capitals to close the fashion month.
If there is one thing that these last two weeks have shown, it is that creativity and fashion shows have not been negatively impacted by Covid as previously thought.
Many were worried that the social distancing would not have allowed brands to present through fashion shows and that it would not have inspired the designers. In the end, they are human like all of us and if for everyone, researches are showing how the habits changed, the social distancing, the restrictions, the not being able to move and the fear had an impact on our mental conditions, nobody excluded that the designers would remain immune. Yet today, after the past two weeks of fashion shows and fashion movies, they have shown that they really have something special.
Jacquemus, after the lavender field of the previous year, has amazed everyone and proposed the himself as the perfect example that creativity had not abandoned fashion during the lockdown and that fashion shows with social distancing are possible and no less spectacular. To close the package of a perfect presentation during a difficult 2020, the Jacquemus collection is available for pre-order until 31 July on the site, with deliveries from December to March 2021, thus including another hot topic in this sector: sustainability.
“JACQUEMUS is committed to developing its production in the most progressive, sensitive and sustainable ways.Â
Pre-orders help ensure that production corresponds more directly to demand, ultimately establishing a positive commercial model for all.”
In case you missed it, I leave you the links to the extraordinary spring / summer 2021 L’Amour fashion show and also the link to this interesting article: https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/socially-distanced-fashion-show
That creativity has not been compromised, but challenged with spectacular results is also demonstrated by the presentation of Dior’s Haute Couture, through a magical and surreal mini-film directed by Matteo Garrone.
When Alessandro Michele in May said that out of five appointments a year with Gucci he would have proposed only two «because in my head I think of spring and autumn as two spontaneous, instinctive phases of the metamorphosis of the planet, of time, of ‘atmosphere »other designers and brands have joined in not wanting to present in September as scheduled, including Michael Kors, Saint Laurent, Marc Jacobs, Alexander Wang. In that press release, however, Alessandro Michele announced a special event in July: Epilogue, whose high demands have been enormously respected. A 12-hour live streaming event started at 8am on Friday 17th and with a narrative part of Alessandro Michele at 2PM. For those interested in the industry, the event was a great way to peek behind the scenes and see what it means to organize a fashion show, while for everyone else it was a further confirmation of how this pandemic has fortunately not impacted the creative gene of the designers.
Before Jacquemus, but without an audience (albeit with 20,000 spectators passing by the river), the live presentation in the midst of all the fashion shows and digital films was Balmain’s. Olivier Rousteing conquers everyone again by presenting the collection on a boat on the Seine. In the show that celebrates the 75 years of the maison, in addition to the creation of Rousteing, archive pieces by Pierre Balmain and his successors such as Oscar de La Renta and Erik Mortensen were presented, accompanied by the live musical performance of Yseult. ” What happened on Sunday went beyond digital fashion week ”.
Olivier Rousteing confirms to Vogue, how fashion shows are here to stay “It’s really hard to just do digital without any physical experience; we are all missing it,” he offered. “We work for an audience, and you lose the emotion if you don’t have one. We need to go back to that.”
These great fashion shows brought to all of us a wave of positivity and inspiration that lacked during the quarantine period. If a sector like fashion seemed to have suffered so much from the crisis (closed stores, old industry icons bankrupted), it was certainly not reassuring for anyone, not only for those directly involved. What would the future have been like in general? Would creativity, dreams and energy have been lost? Fortunately, the designers raised the spirits of many and we feel the desire to continue making great fashion, to unleash the creative side, to inspire, to tell stories.
Maybe that’s why the comments under the video of Prada’s presentation “the show that never happened” do not seem to be complimented. Many defined it as “dark” some even said: “ Is this a horror movie about skinny ppl” and accuse the models of unhealthy thinness. In short, a presentation that does not echo the positivity and energy that people now need after difficult months and which would have been expected from the last solo-show by Miuccia Prada before the arrival of Raf Simon.
What is certain is that fashion shows are not going anywhere. As for everything, there will be changes over time, these two weeks have shown how you can get out of the old patterns while respecting the objectives of a fashion show that is not only to show new collections but to start a conversation and make people dream in a spectacular way.
You can watch all the digital shows here:
What are your opinions on these fashion shows? Comment below
