No Going Back to Normal - It's Time for a Re-Sorting!
"Once the crisis is over, we will need beauty and appreciate the simple things in life again" Giorgio Armani
When exactly one year ago one country after another in Europe went into lockdown and millions moved into their home offices, online shops were already reporting a new fashion boom: "Loungewear". No question, the corona crisis has immediately changed consumer behavior.
Runway shows during a global virus pandemic? Hardly imaginable. And so the designers became particularly creative for autumn-winter 2021 and swapped the catwalk for movie screens. Some streamed online, others created elaborate video presentations. Big stage sets told even more stories about the looks, and we could all be a part of it. The new season proves: inspiration is everywhere - even when everything comes to a standstill.
The idea that a group of hundreds of people would fly to the other end of the world for a ten-minute show was no longer in keeping with the times - because it is simply anything but sustainable. How consistently one can use the corona crisis as an occasion to slow down was shown by a large number of established brands, including Saint Laurent and Gucci, which in the future want to show increasingly smaller collections only twice a year, in particular in the summer and autumn seasons, instead of as usual with plenty of intermediate collections from resort to pre-fall and numerous capsule collections.
With the short-dated cancellation of the resort presentations and the complete postponement of the Fashion Weeks in our previous year 2020, the concept of Fashion Week caused fear in the industry at the expense of loyal fashion fans. The pandemic has reshuffled the cards and the nerves of buyers were also on edge.
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After innovative films and big stage design in couture, we were also well entertained in the Ready-to-Wear AW 2021 and were inspired by the coming autumn-winter season. But since the world is still in the midst of a pandemic, we had to continue to experience the shows virtually in our own four walls. A big advantage after all: In the comfortable social distancing, hardly anyone had to travel to London, Milan and Paris. We enjoyed digital front row in comfortable day-pyjamas on the sofa at home.
But nothing was like before: Usually hundreds of fashion people squeeze tightly packed on benches and marvel at the results of weeks of work by a fashion house. Again, safety precautions were in place: no audience, but a very special Corona Fashion Week from home.
The designs that were shown at the current fashion weeks were created at a time when our normality was falling apart. The mood in the autumn-winter collections was just as apocalyptic (we remember the gloomy beauty of Dior and Salvatore Ferragamo) as it was future-oriented with party wear for the coming times after lockdown (Lanvin, Christian Cowan and Moschino).
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The fact that brands like Versace or Louis Vuitton simply published the photos of their collections online was therefore found by many fashion experts to be pleasantly decelerating and particularly future-oriented. Other houses tried to breathe additional life into their new designs with moving image material - at the head the French fashion house Chanel. Some designers nevertheless let the show take place under the highest security precautions: without an audience, but via live stream and thus brought our fashion weeks into the World Wide Web.
It was already clear in advance that there would be no Fashion Week full of surprises and grand gestures due to the difficult production conditions alone. Most designers continued to move reliably in the directions they had already taken in previous seasons. They were inspired by their design archives and brought old treasures back to life.
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Suddenly there were borders again and they had to deal much more closely with their own culture. Many designers therefore found their inspiration very obvious in their immediate vicinity. For most designers and fashion brands, however, this also means the collapse of their supply chains. Therefore, they simply had to use what they still had in the studios, so patchwork as the sustainable recycling of old fabrics was once again an important topic of the season.
The boundaries between performance art and fashion shows were blurred. From snow-covered Miu Miu stages from Milan to a stage in Antwerp, on which Dries Van Noten showcased human emotions through his Autumn-Winter 2021 collection, the creative directors left room for the bold. Valentino-Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli followed and, in addition to MSGM, showed his punk spirit AW 21 collection also in a theatre.
Digital approaches created possibilities that probably could not have taken place in an analog runway show. Collective projects between like-minded artists and unforeseen brand collaborations emerged that might never have come together without global restrictions.
The collections of the current season may come across as cozy, but they have also shown that Fashion Week can be more egalitarian, emission-free and sincere than ever. If it were not due to the external circumstances of the pandemic, one could even call this shuffling of the conventions rebellious or comfortably revolutionary. In the end, every negative happening usually also has something positive. Let us see this emergency brake as an opportunity for a sustainable reset. Even if a digital fashion week can by no means emulate the emotionality of a "real" fashion week, the fashion industry now has an opportunity like never before to detach itself in pandemic times: from the rapid pace of the seasons and the need to constantly reinvent itself. However, it remains to be seen which changes will remain once the dust has settled.
