- Do we pretend to be nothing?
Many thought the digital fashion weeks would be a saga only when 2020 became 2021. That you would get to sit close together around the catwalk, run live broadcasts via your own Instagram and kiss your cheeks with people outside the showroom again. But then no. When the fashion weeks kicked off in January, it was digitally or with a very limited number of spectators. And so it is still.
The clammy grip of the corona pandemic has not yet loosened. Even during the digital screenings, the models have kept their distance; backstage you had to wear masks and everyone has had to be tested for COVID-19 in advance.
But on the catwalk itself, there has been strangely little sign of the pandemic. The styling has been characterized by being done with the sign of hope. Only a small minority, for example, have shown face masks. Do they hope that this will be a chapter in the past when the collections end up in stores?
That's exactly what Rick Owens is reacting to. The designer moved his views from Paris to Venice when lockdown became a fact about a year ago now. Now he has shown three collections in the declining Italian city.
On Thursday, the brand's autumn and winter collection for 2021 was displayed on a catwalk on the island of Lido. And most of the outfits were styled with face masks.
Rick Vwens tells Vogue: "I do not understand. Why was I the only designer who showed face masks? Or among the very few? Do we pretend to be nothing? That the conditions we live under now are no longer valid?”
When the pandemic was first a fact, some fashion houses apparently got dollar signs in their eyes. Everyone was suddenly going to launch a face mask. But many also chose to make their factories available to produce both face masks, anti-bac and other infection control equipment. Now it seems that the industry will try to look ahead instead.
Vogue writer Anders Christian Madsen writes that the fashion world is now divided into those who push escapism, are realists and those who are somewhere in between.
He asks Owens if he is an optimist.
- “I like to take everything into account. We can celebrate certain things, but we must also be realistic. I can certainly be quite cynical of myself, but after all, I'm definitely an optimist. And maybe a little fatalist.”
