Fashion Industry’s Response To Social Isolation Due To Coronavirus Outbreak Worldwide

It is expected that the luxury retail would lose billions of dollars due to lock-down and social isolation. Even then during these tough times various Fashion Brands came forward to support human race fight the deadly Coronavirus -COVID-19.

Like every other industry, fashion industry is facing a big hit because of COVID-19. Most people are afraid that they might catch the virus while going out for shopping where as many other think it is wastage of resources and money to be spend on luxury fashion items when there would be no opportunity for them to show those off to the other people due to social isolation and lockdown. In the current situation people are only interested in investing their money in items such as multi-layer masks, medicated wipes, hand sanitizers and other disinfectant products.

Understanding their responsibility many fashion brands came forward for the sake of helping people and saving humanity from destruction. The luxury goods conglomerate LMVH -the parent company of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Givenchy and Guerlain- took the lead and announced that they would use their three perfume and cosmetic production facilities of the brands named above for producing hand sanitizers. They would give hydroalcoholic gel (hand sanitizer) to the French authorities so that these could be distributed in the French hospitals fighting the Coronavirus outbreak. During this time, they would not produce any cosmetics for these brands. Their plan was to deliver these sanitizers free of cost in 39 public hospitals in Paris.

Moreover, Donatella Versace -the Italian Fashion Designer and chief creative officer of Versace- pledged that she and Allegra -Donatella’s daughter- would donate 200,000 euros to the intensive care department of San Raffaele hospital in Milan. In her statement she said “Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this disease and to all the doctors and  medical staff who have been working heroically non-stop in the past weeks in the effort to take care of our loved ones. This is when we, as a society, need to stand together and care for one another.”

John Donahoe -President and CEO of Nike, Inc.- along with his wife, Penny and Phil Knight -cofounder and chairman emeritus of Nike- and Kathy And Mark Parker – executive chairman Nike- committed to donate $10 million to Oregon-based organizations to support them to fight against COVID-19. Nike Inc. and Nike Foundation as organizations committed to gave away $5million for local and international relief efforts to support the communities. Furthermore, John Donahoe pledged “All employee donations to COVID-19 response efforts will be matched two-to-one.”

Parada donated six ICUs to different hospitals in Milan. Giorgio Armani donated 1.25 million euros to the hospitals in Milan and National Civil Protection Agency. $1 million were donated by Kering – the conglomerate which owns Gucci, Balenciaga, and Saint Laurent- to the Red Cross Society of China. Moncler gave away 10 million euros for the construction of 400 ICUs in Milan. Dolce & Gabbana is supporting the research for fighting COVID-19 at Humanitas University.

A huge number of brands such as Nike, Reebok, Under Armour, Urban Outfitters, Patagonia, Supreme, Louis Vuitton, Everlane, Adidas, Abercrombie and Fitch, Levi’s, Nordstrom, and many others have closed their stores temporarily till the situation gets under-control. Gucci and Giorgio Armani have stopped their production in Italy. Rolex also closed its factories in Switzerland. High profile fashion events are postponed indefinitely or cancelled. Anna Wintour -editor in chief of Vogue- and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that Met Gala which is the fashion’s biggest and most awaited event of the year would be postponed indefinitely.

In this uncertain situation everyone is taking part in making things better for the communities they live and work in. May things get better soon.