Page 13 - Demo

Intermezzo - COVID-19
When I started to work on this project, Covid-19 was not yet in sight. The trends and developments I envisaged were based on my understanding of the pre-Covid -19 society and the resulting expected speed at which changes would materialise. Covid-19 changed all that.
The world came to a grinding halt and with that the traveling circus of fashion weeks. The summer fashion weeks in Paris, London and Milano were cancelled or postponed24. Without a view on a clear end date for the crisis, the industry started their recovery plans and announced that it is working on digital alternatives to the runway shows so that the buying season can remain on schedule. Suddenly, the view I created for 2030 became reality with frightening speed. And the changes were, as expected, not driven by altruism or the wish to save the planet but by pure and simple necessity. The necessity to adapt to fast changing circumstances in order to survive as a business.
And there was more. In the time of coronavirus lockdown, when we were all at home and focused on our social media news feeds, we needed stories more than ever. Stories keep us connected, stories broaden our horizons, stories capture our imagination, stories enrich our lives. Now that we were all isolated from the real world, we began to look at all the different ways to stay connected, not only with family and friends but also with other communities. Fashion has always been a field of aspirations and dreams, a fertile ground for storytelling. The challenge ; how to create new content without leaving your house began25.
After a few failed attempt from celebrities to give advice to the locked down world from the safety and luxury of their enormous houses, fashion designers began to remove the barrier of ‘untouchable’ that for so many years had been the norm. Comparable to how influencers were communicating the total fashion week experience, designers began to take out the middle man and invited their customers into their world.
Carine Roitfeld reunited the whole world on youtube with a fashion show26, global talks about fashion were held on vogue.com27 and Simon Porte Jacquemus began a challenge28. But the modern day consumer didn’t sit still either. The self-creators were being born, classics are being reinvented and Instagram pictures of people recreating outfits, up-cycling outfits and making outfits with old stock went viral. This is the new way of creativity and the new ways of creating fashion.
24https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/news-analysis/paris-fashion-week-mens-and- couture-cancelled
25https://theimpression.com/fashions-digital-artists-are-todays-new-storytellers/ 26https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm8mbAPAWG0 27https://www.vogue.com/article/vogue-global-conversations 28https://fashionista.com/2020/04/instagram-fashion-challenges