LVMH-owned megabrand Dior is planning a one-off digital fashion event in July but will return to the traditional fashion calendar in September.
The Dior cruise collection will show on 22 July outside the Paris Fashion Week calendar, from Piazza del Duomo in Lecce, Puglia, streamed online to a global audience. Dior will not show a couture show in June but will return to the traditional physical shows for Spring/Summer 2021 in September.
“There will always be a place in fashion for a live fashion show,” Dior chief executive Pietro Beccari said at a press conference today. “Luxury, and the emotion that comes with it, will be there after the pandemic. That’s what we’re focusing on.” Fashion shows are important, not just for Dior, but for the network of businesses and people it supports, he said. The house “will follow the rhythm of fashion week” from September.
The fashion industry is racing to meet the new digital imperative amid Covid-19, with Chanel offering a seven-minute fashion film on Instagram and London Fashion Week reformatting to a web-based platform of talks, podcasts and virtual showrooms. But these early iterations have been criticised for lacking inspiration and poor audience engagement. Dior says its collection, created in collaboration with local craftsmen and artists in Puglia entirely over phone and video, is aimed at global buyers and press.
“It was a completely different way to work. We want our people to be safe, but we also want to look to the future,” said Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri. The collection is dedicated to Chiuri’s father, who was born in Puglia.
Burberry is also planning a physical show for its SS21 collection “in nature” that will be streamed to online viewers on 17 September, the eve of London Fashion Week. “Especially recently, we have all yearned to reconnect again, and for this show, I wanted to celebrate these feelings by bringing our community together in a creative experience that takes place within the beautiful, natural landscape of Britain,” chief creative officer Riccardo Tisci said earlier today.
Other brands from Michael Kors to Chloé are reshaping their collections and reconsidering how and when collections arrive in public, given concern over the level of overproduction, pace of newness and environmental footprint of fashion months. Kors is reducing down to two collections a year, outside of the calendar, and selling them to stores before revealing them publicly. In this vein, Dior says buyers in Paris, where the luxury house is based, have already bought the new cruise collection. Samples of fabrics and bags of shoes and accessories have been sent to retailers.
Kering-owned brands Gucci and Saint Laurent have made deeper overhauls to their future fashion schedules, with Gucci promising “seasonless” events and Saint Laurent planning to set its own agenda.
Some experts are sceptical about an end to fashion calendar. "The recent pandemics made everyone reflect on the crazy pace of the industry, but I am not convinced that even the most powerful houses can really set their own agenda. Imagine if all Gucci’s competitors did the same: would the audiences be interested to see a show every two weeks, all year long, because there is no fashion momentum anymore?" says Benjamin Simmenauer, a professor at Institut Français de la Mode. "Lavishness is not outdated: for the happy few clients who already have everything money can buy, luxury brands have to offer something impossible to purchase. That’s the purpose of the show."
“Luxury is emotional. When it comes to fashion, nothing carries the emotion of a real fashion show. From the setting, the music, the story that Maria Grazia Chiuri would like to tell through the clothes, the electricity that we feel in that moment, the pressure of deadlines, to the adrenaline, everything is part of the fashion world and the emotion and passion that we would like to give,” said Beccari.
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