World Events and The Fashion Industry
The invasion of Ukraine has been all over the news and social media platforms. The seriousness and reality of the situation has definitely taken over on most platforms. At the same time as the seriousness of the situation going on, Milan fashion week took place. Even though this was planned months and months before not knowing the invasion would happen, many people were upset about the event happening. This raises the question of when it is okay to continue with major events and when it is not. The collision of world events and the fashion industry definitely made an appearance this past week.
Outside of the Milan fashion week shows protestors made an appearance providing a reasonable disturbance to the events. Their signs messaged “Stop Putin” followed by floods of Ukrainian flags.
Though these protestors were not protesting necessarily against the fashion shows going on, they were mainly focused on the seriousness of the events of the world.
The fashion industry has always had an issue with continuing their own expensive events without acknowledging what is going on in the world.
That made a change this weekend. Georgio Armani made the choice to do his show in silence in order to show “a sign of respect to the people in the unfolding tragedy.” The beauty behind this is the acceptance of world events, beyond the ignorance of many other designers. Fashion weeks have always been high value events for high value people. Correlating the current events with his own fashion reflects highly on his respect for the people of the Ukraine. The quietness of the show shows symbolism and encourages respect to others.
Dima Ievenko, a Ukrainian outerwear designer, was stuck at Milan fashion week amidst all the violence going on in his home. Ievenko provides us insight on how it feels to be dealing with his fashion week experience. He is stuck between this divide of his passion and the seriousness of his home and his employees being affected. His life quickly took a 360 when he went from planning a collection, to helping his 120 employees find safety for them and their families. He describes this change in his reality.
“Starting from Thursday morning, I’ve slept only for three hours. All the other hours I’m on my phone, trying to somehow help from here. It’s getting worse every hour. My parents are in Kyiv, they cannot leave. I have a team of 120 people, all of them are young people, young girls and boys, and there are bombs flying straight at Kyiv. We never expected anything like this.”
Ievenko is only one of many Ukrainian designers being stuck in this divide between the high end fashion industry and the fight for their country. The fashion industry has a huge investment in Russian money. For example, Italy sells nearly $1.34 billion dollars worth of luxury goods to Russia every year. This issue is something that no one necessarily has the answer to at the moment. Though, this is something the fashion industry needs to work on considering Paris fashion week coming up shortly. There are ways we at home who are interested in fashion can help the Ukrainian community. You can buy a virtual dress in blue and yellow, representing the Ukrainian flag. All the money raised goes to Ukrainian aid organizations.
I really like your point on how fashion is a high value event for high value people--I feel like it over flows into a lot of other industries as well. It is always the high value people who are less willing to cancel an event because of something going on in the world. I understand how difficult it is to reschedule something so expensive, but I do think that more designers could have been like Giorgio Armani and gotten off their high horse to acknowledge the greater issues of the world and not just their brand.