On the Future of Runway

By Karinne Aguirre, Cover Art by Cecilia Barnes

In early February of 2020, Vogue Magazine published an article entitled “What Is the Future of the Fashion Show?” The pandemic is not mentioned once. Although coronavirus started to spread as early as January in the United States, it was not taken seriously by the public or the government until the start of March. Perhaps the author behind the aforementioned piece was ahead of their time, but it is also entirely possible that the fashion world was already on the verge of necessary and monumental transformation. The advent of the epidemic simply makes this conversation surrounding the reinvention of the traditional runway show all the more relevant. 

The established calendar for runway shows dictates biannual fashion weeks occurring in February and September in London, New York, Paris, and Milan, meant as a means for designers to present their seasonal collections. In addition, the industry is kept busy during the remainder of the year with variable menswear, bridal, and haute couture shows. When the severity of the pandemic was realized earlier in 2020, it was almost immediately clear that holding fashion week in September, in the manner the industry had grown accustomed to, would be an impossibility. In mid June, the British Fashion Council was one of the first to declare its adoption of a digital format, announcing that men’s fashion week would proceed virtually. In July, the Camera della Nazionale Moda, the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, reported that they, too, would be taking a cybernetic approach in proceeding with Milan Fashion Week. Helsinki Fashion Week took place in early July, and every single show used simulated environments and CGI models. During Paris Couture Week, which also occurred during the month of July, British label Ralph & Russo presented a completely digitally rendered show; CGI models posed against the backdrop of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The approach towards fashion week in the United States has been a bit more varied; a small number of labels are choosing to do in-person, socially distanced shows, while others are releasing videos and other forms of digital content to showcase their collections. Nick Knight, a British fashion photographer, collaborated with Maison Margiela to produce a 50-minute freeform video which provided viewers with a more intimate look at how a seasonal collection comes together, including the extended list of faces that hide behind-the-scenes during traditional runway shows. Loewe, a Spanish luxury fashion house, came up with the concept of the #ShowInABox to display their Spring 2021 Men’s collection. Those that would otherwise have been invited to the show were sent a gray box; inside, the box contained several dividers, each of which held some object selected for its relevance by creative director Jonathon Anderson - i.e. fabric swatches, clothing patterns, and the show’s soundtrack on vinyl. Burberry, the luxury British brand, live-streamed a runway show in what appeared to be the clearing of a forest, sans audience or catwalk. The production was available on Twitch, and garnered about 42,000 viewers. Ermenegildo Zegna, an Italian luxury fashion house, also hosted a “phygital” show, to launch their Spring 2021 collection, presenting all the work of a fashion show via a streaming platform and foregoing the traditional catwalk in favor of a sprawling natural landscape. American designer Cristian Siriano held the preview of his collection in the backyard of his Connecticut home; models wore masks to match their gowns, and those in attendance sat in socially distanced locations across the lawn. Jason Wu, Prada, Sunnei, and Etro, to name just a few, followed a similar model of socially distanced showings. 

This sort of conscientiousness is not only a mandate in our current climate, but one for the future of fashion, as well. According to a report by Ordre, fashion buyers and designers alone contribute around 241,000 tons of CO2 emissions a year by attending fashion weeks in New York, London, Paris, and Milan; that number accounts for more than the total emissions of a small country or enough energy to light up Times Square for 58 years. Fashion must become sustainable, or the industry will inevitably reinvent itself. The significance of sustainability for the future of the fashion world is at the crux of the conversation regarding the influence of technology in fashion, but it took a global pandemic for designers to set these practices into motion. Transforming modes of design, production, and communication to the digital sphere would have an immense impact on the environmental footprint of the fashion industry. 3D imaging could be used from end to end; designers could work to outline a product via 3D imaging, and that product could be passed through review. It could even be made available to corporate customers online, without a thing having been manufactured until the purchase. 

But complete digital transformation, even the sort we are seeing now, is an alarming proposition for a huge number of those interested or invested in fashion. It certainly comes with benefits; those aforementioned, and the fact that digital influence seems an inevitably in our modern world, and that to come. Social media in all its forms has launched anonymous names into fashion celebrities. It allows brands to communicate with an enormous audience all at once. Few things have that power, and increased exposure often leads to an increase in sales. With that being said, there is no denying the visceral power of seeing a fashion show in person. 

That is the ultimate but - the insistence on the experience of bearing witness to clothes in motion, clothes that breathe with the bodies in them. Fashion is intensely human at its roots; it is the creative process through which we present ourselves to the world, and as a craft, it is that experience melded with art where one creates a proposal, and invites an audience to react. Generations of designers have grown up watching and studying shows of the past that have etched themselves in fashion history, and seen these productions as the epitome of human creativity. These truly are shows: dramatic, expressive, glamorous, emotional. They are an opportunity to expand the significance of the shapes we see hanging on bodies everyday, to present a message or a mood that corresponds or even explains something we do on a minute level every day when we dress ourselves in the morning, or in the evening. But it would be impossible to make the argument that nothing can change; an industry that relies so fundamentally on human bodies in every shape and form does not have the leisure to disregard them when it is convenient. It need not entail the eradication of traditions like the runway, but it does demand their re-evaluation and reinvention, as all progress does.