London fashion week drops elitist traditions as event goes fully digital
At London fashion week, all eyes are on what the shows look like, not what the clothes look like.
London is the first of the four major fashion capitals to stage a fully digital fashion week. The schedule, which began today and runs until Sunday, will feature no catwalk shows, no cocktail parties and definitely no air-kissing. With the traditional format a no-go under physical distancing rules, shows have been replaced with films, virtual showrooms, podcasts, playlists, livestreamed panel discussions and even a drop-in virtual afterparty. The invitation-only elitist traditions have been ditched in favour of digital content accessible to all.
This season’s muse? Netflix. London’s new-look fashion week is closer to a pop-up streaming service for fashion than it is to the shows that were staged in front of packed benches at a Thames-side venue just four months ago.
Today’s opening event was headlined not by a designer, but by a poet.
A two-minute reading of a new piece by James Massiah, who describes his work as “party poetry”, was filmed at his home in south London. It began: “Looking forward to a lot of things when this whole thing is done.” No clothes featured in this “show”, except for Massiah’s black T-shirt – instead, there were namechecks for London fashion designers including Bianca Saunders, Mowalola and Asai, plus a rhyme of “Prada shoes” with “face masks on the tube”.
An allusion to flinging “statues in the sea” referenced the anti-racism protests of the past two weeks. “In the wake of George Floyd’s death, we are reminded that there is still racial pre
judice and discrimination, which we must and will tackle in the fashion industry,” said the British Fashion Council’s Caroline Rush in an opening address, delivered by video. Alongside an ongoing commitment to reducing its environmental impact, London fashion week “must now double our efforts to take on racism in all its forms,” she said.
Nicholas Daley, the second name on Friday’s schedule, is a menswear designer who fuses elements of his Scottish and Jamaican heritage in his clothes. (Previous shows have proved, for instance, that tweed looks very different when set to experimental jazz.) This season, his contribution consisted of behind-the-scenes footage of last season’s catwalk show and a playlist referencing the collection he is working on, which has been delayed by lockdown logistics.
The film had a grainy, handheld quality, which added to the nostalgia of watching life before physical distancing, with models tightly circling the trio of musicians who live-scored the show and hundreds of people squeezing together to watch.
Although technically gender-neutral, the event falls in London’s traditional menswear slot, which means an absence of household names. Burberry, for instance, will not show until autumn’s womenswear season. But star power is being leant by high-profile supporters of British menswear such as Tinie Tempah, who will take part in an online discussion with Dylan Jones, the BFC’s menswear chair, while the Arsenal defender Héctor Bellerín talks race, meditation, veganism and famous football kits in a special-edition podcast.
The stakes are high for British fashion, because London’s prestige in the industry owes much to its reputation for flamboyant clothes and mustsee catwalk theatrics. When Shanghai became the first fashion week to pivot to an entirely digital format in response to the pandemic, the event three months ago was hailed as a commercial success, drawing 11 million viewers and selling £2.2m of merchandise direct to consumers during live streams.
But the virtual fashion show is still waiting for its first breakout hit, with even the biggest names struggling to translate their catwalk star power into a winning digital formula.
Chanel this week unveiled its Cruise collection online; it was initially scheduled for a lavish launch event in Capri. The designer Virginie Viard’s summery shorts-suits in boucle tweed were widely admired, but the experience of watching a short film on a smartphone did not convince critics, with the New York Times describing the event as “a disappointment on many levels”.
All-digital fashion weeks will take place in Paris and Milan in July. Although no audience is expected to be permitted at any of the events, Dolce & Gabbana will live-stream a catwalk show staged in the garden’s of Milan’s Humanitas University. Other brands plan to select small groups of editors and buyers to “visit” a showroom for private walk-throughs of the collection hosted by the designer – via a video conference. In Paris, some in the industry hope that small-scale catwalk shows will be permitted to take place in front of a live audience by the time of the next ready-to-wear events in October.