Coronavirus-induced fear and anxiety have characterised our collective lives during the last few weeks. Yet, as patients in intensive care decreased and death numbers also showed a decline in some European countries such as Italy, many people have started discussing about returning to work, reopening factories and restarting certain key industries, among them also fashion.
But while the Italian government is thinking about the so-called "phase two" of the Coronavirus emergency and while many questions remain unanswered (students are still in a limbo about their exams...), you wonder what will happen to the fashion industry. The fashion system has functioned on a super fast lane until a couple of months ago, yet it came to an abrupt standstill soon after Milan Fashion Week (the Italian capital of fashion was already experiencing its first Coronavirus cases when the Paris shows had just started).
It is somehow shocking looking back now at images of fashion shows that took place then and seeing packed venues and shots taken behind the scenes of the runways showing busy design teams at work.
At the moment, hospitals and temporary health care units are sadly the most crowded places we can think of, while quite a few factories that originally produced garments or fragrances for major brands in Italy were reconverted to make face masks, PPE or hand sanitiser. Other factories and companies have made use of the temporary lay-off schemes for employees, but there are doubts and dilemmas about the industry in general as Coronavirus has disrupted lives and economies leaving many jobless.
We have also gone through a major "influencer detox": as travelling, fashion shows, product launches and other assorted glamorous events to which influencers were usually invited to were cancelled, the digital entrepreneurs were confined to their own houses like the rest of us, losing their magic auras and turning back into ordinary people (apart maybe from Italian influencer Chiara Ferragni who, after doing her duty launching a crowdfunding to collect money for the Coronavirus emergency in Milan, relapsed into advertising mode, resettling on companies providing food and entertainment, from Galbani dairy products to the Disney+ channel...). So we're somehow re-learning how to live with fewer things and fewer needs.
In March trend forecaster Li Edelkoort told Dezeen magazine that the virus is "a blank page for a new beginning because lots of companies and money will be wiped out in the process of slowing down." In some ways this blank page is very slowly being written, with people picking up the pieces, thinking about how to make things better in the future maybe with the help of innovative technologies, but also with more humanity.
Brunello Cucinelli has for example been posting encouraging messages on his Instagram page: as ever the optimism, the Solomeo-based king of cashmere first wrote a letter in March to his co-workers and friends, highlighting how he heard the swallows chirping from his office in his ancient castle, and interpreted them as a positive symbol of rebirth.
It is true that most of us do not live in an ancient castle and, rather than hearing swallows singing, after weeks of quarantine we have been dealing with maddening loneliness / worries over relatives and friends segregated in their own houses or hospitalised with Coronavirus / tensions with random family members / kids behaving disruptively and stubbornly refusing to do their homework (after all, what's the point as there's no school?) / teenagers following online classes in pyjamas or hiding away in the inscrutable recesses of their hoodies / and annoying flatmates (please tick the box that applies to your quarantine circumstances). For many of us there have also been sleepless nights over our transformed and suspended lives, lost jobs, unpaid bills and lack of money to buy food and, last but not least, over that cough (is that just a cough or is that Coronavirus? How do I get tested if I'm not a politician, a celebrity or a footballer? Who knows - ah, the mysteries of life).
At the same time it is interesting to look at Cucinelli's strategy: his own company naturally registered a decline in revenues, but the entrepreneur expressed optimism and recently promised he will not be firing any of his workers, but confided in recovering the losses in 2021. At the beginning of April, the Italian entrepreneur also posted a "Letter to Investors for the New Time", that revolved around the concept of humanistic capitalism that Cucinelli has been promoting. It consists in a fair and sustainable profit, harmonised with giving back to ensure a balance between profit, human dignity and ethics. "The rising of a new time has already begun from the shadows of a painful night," Cucinelli wrote in his new message. "This new time, my esteemed friends, I see it brimming with fabulous opportunities, a bearer of new lifeblood, a creator of ideas revolving around a renewed desire for life. I know that there will be economic growth."
"But at the end of this all we will be different; we too, like time, will be somehow new. Something has been transformed and it will make us see things and life in a different, beautiful, enchanted light. That very same bread, which we took for granted yesterday, will now be a new surprise, a warning to remind us of those who do not have any bread, and should have it. In every man we will recognize another man: our brother."
"Dear friends, I am convinced that the new time will be a fascinating opportunity for us to shape a virtuous relationship between humanism and technology, betwen spirit and harmony, between profit and giving back. We must know that behind every problem there is an opportunity."
"So I would like to say that this is an opportunity that does not concern an individual man only, but every single man in the world (…) if we focus on the language of Creation, we will naturally return to our usual life equipped with some extra values, fascinated by everything that is worthy of being called 'human.'"
Will humanistic capitalism be the solution to post-Coronavirus recession in the fashion industry, or will everything go back to the same super fast rhythms we had so far, even though many key players in the industry have already stated the system will change for good after this shocking reset? Time will tell, but in the meantime, it would be nice if more fashion companies, following Cucinelli's example, would decide not to fire their workforce but operated cuts on other budgets including spectacular fashion shows, glamorous presentations and exclusive parties. A little bit of rigour and more focus on the value of the real people behind this industry would probably be the final recipe to rebuild it post-Coronavirus.
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