This year’s fashion weeks were less glamorous around the world, missing all the celebrities driving in their newest car model, popping champagne amid the most expensive streets of Milan, Paris, London, and New York.
This is no typical year, there are all of three socially distanced catwalk shows, with a smattering of small salon shows or invitation-only appointments offered by the designers, not to mention that International buyers, editors, and models aren’t jetting in according to AP News.
With most designers showing their wares online only, style in the COVID era is largely limited to streaming fashion shows on an iPad from the couch probably with slippers in place of stilettos.
Caroline Rush, Chief executive of the British Fashion Council, which organizes London Fashion Week said: “This is not a full-blown fashion week – it’s not mass audiences. It’s very much happening in private and the scales have tipped in favor of digital.”
The fashion industry has been hit hard by the corona virus pandemic, and in Europe, where countries are seeing an alarming new surge in cases, few consumers are in the mood to buy luxury bags and dresses.
Even before the virus outbreak, brands had been experimenting with technology to get to broader audiences by streaming shows online.
Imran Amed, founder of the influential trade news website Business of Fashion said: “The pandemic is a moment for “creative problem-solvers” who are willing to bend the rules to step forward.”
“Right now, when those established ways of doing things is questioned, and are impossible to actually implement anymore, we have to reinvent,” he added.
