Fashion and a global Pandemic - who is helping W.H.O?
Pardon the pun but the current states of the world aren’t plaguing the fashion industries as much as one may think. It’s going to take much more than a virus to put these multi million dollar designers and companies on the back burner and that’s been heavily showcased over the previous fashion weeks. Moscow and Shanghai both put on their respective shows with a slight platform adjustment. That platform? the internet. With more popular shows raking in Millions of viewers and dollars, Covid-19 is officially changing and showcasing the potentialities of an industry who’s main basis relies on the public eye. Even if that public eye has to be watching from a couch, bag of Doritos in hand.
Although multiple fashion weeks were cancelled, there was still a significant number of private and public releases with high fashion designers and even more so in the lower levels of the industry. Fast fashion is having an absolute hay day. With Millions and millions of consumers sitting at home ready to spend some pocket change we see companies in this realm are officially unloading their inventory, 50-60% off sales are becoming the norm (which is a bludgeoning trend during recessions). The benefit being overpriced and underdeveloped items becoming accessible once again, the downside being the massive amount of textile waste and possibly an unrecovering sales trend. It’s a risk that fast fashion companies are willing to take, selling a dress for $24 that was once marked at $60 seems like a steal now. This is until consumers get the parcel in hand, realizing that Polyester garment is definitely not worth $24 in the first place, let alone $60. Although this hasn’t proven to be an issue previously during the rise of unethical fashion, then again we haven’t lived through a pandemic in that time.
This isn’t an advocation to send fast fashion producers to the guillotine, but rather an opportunity to supply ethical manufacturers and designers with the cash flow they deserve. Fortunately, with access to affordable small businesses of every aesthetic, anywhere in the world (Thanks google!) and price reductions like you wouldn’t believe, our job as online consumers is quite easy.
The hashtag #Smallbusiness in itself yields 29.8M results on its own, mix it up with #womenownedbusiness for an example and you’ve got nearly every Shopify or big cartel shop on your screen within a few profile clicks. If that’s more effort than you’d care to put in, Depop, Poshmark and Offerup are tools for gently loved garments, all conglomerated onto one app for your shopping pleasure.
Either way, the fashion titans have revealed themselves during this pandemic. Burberry and Prada have already pledged themselves to producing face masks in their factories while Bulgari is gearing up to produce hand sanitizers. Chanel is donating 1.2 million euros to a hospital emergency fund as Gucci hands over 1 million as well as their instagram account to WHO (world health organization).
by Lukas Skye
photo: Naeim Jafari
