Creating the Future: How Fashion Designers Are Responding to the Crisis
“THE WORLD AS WE KNEW IT IS OVER,” says Donatella Versace, and she’s right. Across every spectrum of society in virtually every nation, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended our outlook. As for the future? In a script that’s being rewritten each day, there are a few constants: We’ll need to look forward, to adapt, and to take nothing for granted.
Fashion has long been a community driven by passion, artistry, joy, and invention, though, of course, around it has evolved an industry of perpetual motion, always moving, faster, faster, faster . . . until everything stopped. Thrown from our carousel, sheltering in place, coming to grips with our ever-shifting new reality, we’ve all had the opportunity to reflect—and then to react.
It took only a few days to realize that the fashion community could be of immediate practical help in a global medical emergency. Factories and studios that were able to pivot to producing hand sanitizer and medical gowns and masks quickly retooled and got to it. Many emerging designers across America anticipated shifting CDC guidelines and began developing their own takes on what will be the defining garment of this year and maybe more to come: the face covering. Meanwhile, we looked out for one another: In collaboration, the Council of Fashion Designers of America and Vogue launched A Common Thread, a fund to help the most vulnerable designers and their teams weather the sudden shutdown. (As CFDA chairman Tom Ford observes of the landscape these designers must negotiate to survive, “It’s brutal.”) Contributions at press time totaled $4.1 million—money that is being carefully distributed to save jobs and keep some of America’s most talented young creatives in business.
Until March, the one thing in fashion that was set in stone was its perpetual calendar of seasons, collections, and shows. This year, however—for the first time in the history of fashion—all of these long-established plans have been rudely scattered to the winds. The resort shows planned for April and May were canceled; the menswear shows set for June have been canceled. The couture shows in Paris this July—also canceled.
