designing for end times

Be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hit, fash­ion de­sign­ers were al­ready de­sign­ing for the end.

Ma­rine Serre mod­els donned face masks down the run­way for the past two sea­sons and Ba­len­ci­a­ga flood­ed the front row as a nod to ris­ing sea lev­els. Util­i­tar­i­an ar­mor and pro­tec­tive gear was al­ready “the rage.”

At best, some de­sign­ers used their plat­form to in­form peo­ple about the threat of cli­mate change, but the fash­ion in­dus­try al­ready had blood on its hands.

They’ve helped fuel this man-made night­mare of fast fash­ion, in­tense mul­ti-sea­son ex­pec­ta­tions, greed, need, dis­as­ter, pol­lu­tion, waste, but in­stead of do­ing any­thing about it – there’re now de­sign­ing for it.

If you worked in fash­ion, you most like­ly you lost your job be­cause of the pan­dem­ic. Your in­come, and for the most part, your in­spi­ra­tion.

So what is the pur­pose of fash­ion now? An in­dus­try al­ready caus­ing a lot of dam­age, right­ly and swift­ly deemed ‘unessen­tial.’

You’re see­ing more peo­ple heed their con­sump­tion lev­els now for one rea­son or an­oth­er. Though e‑commerce out­lets and ship­ping were still run­ning dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, tra­di­tion­al fash­ion re­tail de­part­ment stores end­ed up strug­gling, but is that re­al­ly a bad thing?

High-priced, fast fash­ion re­tail­ers haven’t done much – if any­thing to – keep up with mod­ern con­sumers. Their ef­forts to rec­og­nize the im­pact they’ve put on the en­vi­ron­ment and to make sub­stan­tial changes have yet to be seen.

 

“What is the greed that is mo­ti­vat­ing a fren­zied hu­man­i­ty to de­stroy the plan­et and de­grade it­self?”
—Daniel Pinch­beck, Break­ing Open the Head

This quote re­al­ly res­onates with me dur­ing this time. I be­lieve peo­ple are think­ing twice about what is re­al­ly im­por­tant.

Pre-quar­an­tine, fash­ion was some­thing of a men­tal health boost­er to me. Some­thing that picked me up in the morn­ing – it was for self.

But with nowhere to go, fash­ion took a back­seat and has me feel­ing a slight sense of loss-of-self. I put on jew­el­ry and a new set of sweats to be­gin my day but it’s just wasn’t rea­son­able to put on what I’d nor­mal­ly wear – vin­tage dress­es, blous­es, lay­ers, jack­ets, boots all to sit around the house in. There is no pur­pose for it. Fash­ion seems now pure­ly for In­sta­gram.

I just cant pull my­self to get styled up for ‘likes.’ It was for me. It was my con­fi­dence, my shield, fash­ion is a part of me, and who I want to be that day.

I be­came the same every­day – com­fort­able – and my clos­et has re­mained ba­si­cal­ly un­touched. I do not know what the pur­pose of fash­ion is dur­ing a stay in place pan­dem­ic. Health should right­ly be the pri­or­i­ty, fash­ion shouldn’t be in the fore­front and I am think­ing more about health, pol­i­tics, and ac­tivism op­por­tu­ni­ties then fash­ion more than ever.

But with fash­ion be­ing my source of in­come, it is still some­what at the fore­front of my well be­ing not only men­tal­ly, but fi­nan­cial­ly. Should we be run­ning away from this in­dus­try? I’ll have to ad­mit for the first time, I thought about it – but no, we shouldn’t run from our mis-deeds, we need to re­set.

What we should be do­ing is think­ing about the fu­ture of fash­ion when things are to­tal­ly re-opened. Of course I don’t wish for Macy’s work­ers to be out of work, for ex­am­ple – so what are the in­dus­tries’ next steps?

With the forced pause, were we think­ing about what kind of re­la­tion­ship we want to have with our fash­ion con­sump­tion?

 

“We’ve put the re­pro­duc­tion of so­ci­ety in the hands of own­ers mo­ti­vat­ed pure­ly by prof­it,”
—Mal­colm Har­ris, Kids These Days

This is some­thing that needs to change in most in­dus­tries but es­pe­cial­ly fash­ion be­cause of its con­sid­er­able im­pacts on the en­vi­ron­ment. We need to in­tro­duce new, green, ben­e­fi­cial jobs to the fash­ion in­dus­try. We should bring back sewing and restora­tion out­lets.

How can we re­cy­cle our un­want­ed cloth­ing bet­ter and lo­cal­ly? How can we make any new clothes out of less waste­ful, biodegrad­able, or re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als? How can we lessen the neg­a­tive im­pacts of glob­al­iza­tion and in­stead bring pro­duc­tion more lo­cal? How can we dis­trib­ute the wealth equal­ly? Just to start.

 

“Can we fi­nal­ly stop idol­iz­ing wealth as the mark­er of a suc­cess­ful life, and in­stead fo­cus on a land­scape over­flow­ing with com­pas­sion, safe­ty, and dig­ni­ty for all?”
—Er­i­ca Williams Si­mon, You De­serve the Truth

The fash­ion in­dus­try right­ly fore­cast­ed the trends, but what are they go­ing to do about it? Keep de­sign­ing for it? They must be think­ing, if we’re go­ing down, we’re go­ing down in style.

 

—fiona pitt

Flom­mist Fiona Pitt is a jour­nal­ist and fash­ion mod­el whose work has tak­en her to Asia and be­yond. To­day she is con­cerned with sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the ef­fects con­sump­tion has on our fu­ture. Copy­right © 2020 Fiona Pitt.

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