COVID-19 Fashion Weeks Bring Puppets and Hand Sanitizers to the Runway

So long to the packed rows of celebrities and the fashion enthusiasts of fashion week; screens and puppets have now taken their place. With New York, Milan, London and Paris all hosting fashion weeks this fall, most designers had to reevaluate how to put on a fashion show in the age of COVID-19.

2007 New York Fashion Week. Source: Art Comments

Paris in particular had a mix of socially-distanced shows to fully digital ones at its fashion week, which recently happened. The Dior show, which was held inside the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, was one of 19 in-person runway shows. The coordinators shortened their guest list to 300, temperatures of all attendees were checked and masks were made mandatory. The Dolce & Gabbana show in Milan passed out cloth masks with their signature logo and most of the attendees sported hand sanitizers as their go to accessory for the day.

Despite these precautions, many fashion houses deemed the risk of the virus too great, and opted for fully virtual shows instead. For the first time ever, Balmain held a virtual runway show. The rows once filled with seats were replaced with TB screens, displaying familiar virtual attendees, like Kris Jenner, Cara Delevingine and Cindy Crawford as models strutted by. 

Moschino, another fashion powerhouse, opted for puppets over people on the runway. Puppets took the places of models and attendees, and some even resembled fashion week favorites like Anna Wintour. The Moschino Spring-Summer 2021 collection had to be scaled to marionette size with proper accessories, shoes and accurate facial features for the lookalikes. 

There is no sugarcoating how different the fashion world looked these past few weeks during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the pandemic did nothing to stifle the creativity within these designers. They truly made certain, whether the show was in person or through Zoom, that the show really must go on.