Fashion Weeks Gone Viral

2020-2021

The fashion world like all else has faced some momentous challenges this year. With uncertainty around every corner. Not unlike us all, designers and their teams have woken up each morning of this bizarre year unsure to what they might face, a worldwide pandemic, a global economic depression, and to top it all off an international justice movement. Some might wonder how it’s even possible to propose a concept for next season when literally anything could happen!

I’m quite certain that business has not run anywhere near usual for the majority of the world this year. But for some industries it’s extremely problematic to form a plan of action. Following weeks of isolation, the fashion industry is beginning to resurface, but the industry how we know it has transformed entirely. Everything must be redefined, starting with fashion shows.

At first, even the concept of attending a live fashion show this year seemed worlds away. However, in this rapidly changing world nothing is for sure anymore. The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM), believe it or not, have recently made statements suggesting a revival live runway shows, just in time for fashion weeks this Autumn. Though, this all rests on the outcome of our global reopening process.

Pending this, designers are forced to find innovative ways of showcasing. While this must be very taxing on the design team, I for one am excited to see what they come up with, how they’ll replace the big production with the online world.

Here’s how designers have wowed us so far.

We’ve just seen Paris Fashion Week close out its first totally digital fashion week. While completely different to the run-of-the-mill fashion weeks, the entirely digital shows received remarkable social media engagement from the likes of Louis Vuitton and Laure Guilbault. Louis Gabriel Nouchi presented us with a Spring/Summer video in which he showcased some actors who’ve found themselves unemployed at the current times. The video has 25,000 views on Youtube, not far from the attention a regular fashion week would bring. In lieu of the physical show format, Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Artistic Director designed a virtual Spring-Summer 2021 Men’s Guide. “The Adventures of Zoooom with Friends” by Virgil Abloh has over 3 million views on Youtube. The Video starts at Vuitton’s ancestral home in Asnières, outside of Paris, packing containers for shipment and sailing them down the Seine. On this journey, we see ‘Zoooom with friends’ hiding as runaways, representing the theme of the season “boyhood”.

On top of this, London fashion week’s online presence saw 166,000 page views over the course. Milan is next to show us what they can do with rumours of 5 whole films being created. There is hopes that live shows will be revived in September, all going well. With any luck, the digital aspects won’t be lost entirely when things return to normal. It’s been incredible seeing how creative designers become when pressed to portray their stories differently. It’s amazing the things you discover when you are forced out of your comfort zone. Nevertheless, in such discerning times, it seems as though the fashion industry really rallied together to get back in the game.