Everyone’s got a new normal these days, but as things unfolded and locked down worldwide, the British Fashion Council was ready to go, recently announcing an online version of London Fashion Week: Men’s, happening June 12th – 14th. Content will roll out in completely digital form for the first time via londonfashionweek.co.uk, reports Vogue. In case women might feel left out and alone at home in these extraordinarily worrisome times, this True Fashionista event has been retrofitted as a gender-neutral presentation, allowing all to enjoy a little normalcy and fun amid the excitement and presentation of tomorrow’s fashion by today’s hottest and up-and-coming designers.
As foreseers of who we wear, the True Fashionista design industry was already off and running online quite a long time before it was the only option, led by Digital Fashion Week, the self-described only 360 offline and online marketing platform focusing on digital strategies to globalize Independent Designers. Partnering with online industry mainstays such as Vogue.com, Nowfashion.com, Business France, Alliance Français and others, they have supported more than 200 independent designers in a growing international online community. Their approach includes implementing experimental tech tools such as live streaming, a multi cam feed, 360° virtual reality, live Interaction and shoppable runway, all which contribute to an all access immersive experience for fashion lovers as well as Fashion Weeks and their various global activities.
When it was time for others to take their runways digital, British Fashion Council had a clear vision. As part of their official launch announcement, Council chief executive Caroline Rush reported, “By creating a cultural fashion week platform, we are adapting digital innovation to best fit our needs today and something to build on as a global showcase for the future. The current pandemic is leading us all to reflect more poignantly on the society we live in and how we want to live our lives and build businesses when we get through this. The other side of this crisis, we hope will be about sustainability, creativity and product that you value, respect, cherish.”
Come June, London Fashion Week hopes to bring the fashion community together, hosting exclusive multimedia content from True Fashionista designers, creatives, artists and brand partners. Plans include operating as a meet-up point, offering interviews, podcasts, designer diaries, webinars and digital showrooms, plus giving the opportunity to designers to generate sales for both the public through existing collections and the retailers through orders for next season’s products.
A collective sigh of relief reverberated with this announcement throughout an industry that, like everything else, had ground to a halt. Still reeling from the cancellation of June’s New York Fashion Week, any and all showings of resort spring 2021 collections or fall 2020 haute couture shows, this embrace of technology is helping to lay the groundwork for new ways of doing things.
Virtual showrooms are coming online in time for resort collections, as Joseph Altuzarra told Vogue Runway recently. “We’ve been working on it remotely and we’re still planning on having a resort collection in time for market.” He muses that it could be as easy as clothing being sent to a model to take selfies. The resort collection Michael Kors would have shown in June will now be shown in July to buyers only; not even the press will see it. What’s more, fall clothing will land in stores as, get this, when the weather starts getting cooler, perhaps righting a longtime trend of getting a jump on the competition.
Kors reflects for Vogue the silver lining for the industry in all the craziness, “One of the only bright lights is that all of us are well aware that something has been broken for quite a while—it’s all a month to six weeks off, and it’s been that way for a long time.”
The industry now has a chance to bring things back into perspective. True Fashionistas has got what you’re looking for in our online and eBay stores. Buy online and get a great deal on top designers.