All hands on deck: the new spirit of fashion
As fashion navigates a pivotal year, a new spirit of family, collaboration, openness and connectivity is taking hold of an industry once known for Devil Wears Prada-style tropes
Wwhat does it take to drive change? ‘We’re all in this together’ T-shirts, bumper stickers and campaigns declared throughout the spring, uniting disparate Londoners, Brits and global citizens alike against Covid-19. But what about fashion? The £1.93 trillion global fashion industry, famous for its cut-throat competitive climate of aspiration and exclusivity, has had a bit of an existential crisis. As the ground rumbled beneath, upending its schedule, supply chain and the nature of its very being, the people who populate the business began to mobilise. And as the year’s constellation of pivotal events set in motion a chain reaction of reckoning, people within fashion began to think and operate differently.
There was the wave of organised collectives, including the Emergency Designer Network, and luxury houses, including LVMH and Giorgio Armani, who converted their factories, studios and workshops to make PPE for frontline healthcare workers as the pandemic reached its height. And months later, the Black Lives Matter movement inspired an unprecedented number of new initiatives from the 15 Percent Pledge – where retailers promised to dedicate 15% of shelf space to Black-owned businesses – to the online database Black Owned Everything, and coalitions including the Black In Fashion Council and The Kelly Initiative – all working to hold the fashion industry to account to change its poor track record on race in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. And now, climate change climbs to the top of the agenda once again as an extraordinary number of wildfires rage in North America.
Throughout it all, we ask: what is the role of fashion in 2020? And how can an industry built on the premise of exclusivity and consumption evolve quickly at a pivotal moment in history like this?
Just as a family rallies around each other in the face of tragedy, the fashion industry has begun embracing a culture of community, collaboration and inclusivity with renewed urgency. It has never been more fashionable to be socially and environmentally conscious – and kind. Here, Grazia celebrates a few of the many inspiring networks, collectives, collaborators and family acts helping to change the culture of fashion.