Is this the end of the runway show?

Fashion shows have given us a lot. They’re iconic moments wrapped up in the history of our culture. The dress painted on-stage by robots for Alexander McQueen, Phoebe Philo’s first show for Céline, J.Lo in that Versace dress… the list goes on.

Lockdown, like for every sector, has given the fashion industry a chance to revaluate, particularly when it comes to fashion shows. Already under question for a while now, are traditional shows twice a year across four cities, outdated, unnecessary and out-of-touch with how we consume brands today?

Sustainability is a huge conversation. “Fashion is the industry that’s the most polluting,” Natacha Ramsay-Levi, Creative Director of Chloé, tells Vogue and shows play into this in a big way. The carbon footprint of guests flying across the world to attend is one headache, the huge amount of materials that goes into them is another.

More than just the shows, the whole business model is under scrutiny from a sustainability standpoint. An unbelievable amount of resource goes into making the runway collections but then buyers tend to mostly order the pre collections, not the extravagant catwalk pieces. Designers show two seasons ahead but customers today want to see now, buy now. Luxury fashion has a short lifespan. One season old and a piece is discounted and has lost its value. Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing admits “if you need to present a lot of product, and a lot of ranges of product, we cannot make everything sustainable.” We need to make smaller collections, he concludes.

for sustainability, We need to make smaller collections

Olivier Rousteing, Creative Director, Balmain

Has the coronavirus pandemic affected our appetite for things? Matthew Williamson says it has made them re-think the product and collections they make for his brand Alyx. Trend forecaster Li Edelkoort calls us in a “quarantine of consumption” – we’re on a spending detox, revaluating our shopping habits. Is that headlining runway dress that’s beautiful and exquisite, but so obviously highly impractical, still relevant anymore?

And yet fashion is about beauty, craft, poetry and maybe that’s still massively important. Shows are a stage for this. Marc Jacobs talks about confinement making us screen-orientated and we’re craving human connection. Fashion shows are a human moment. They’re a focus for a fashion business, a place for journalists, buyers and influencers to gather, and a spectacle that inspires a whole sea of fashion followers. Even if the most important thing is what comes out on an Instagram post, the show creates the buzz and the spark. The best fashion shows have a social or cultural message. They make the brand more than just selling.

The lockdown situation has thrown fashion’s relationship with technology right to the fore. Fashion used to be snobbish about social media but it’s catching up. Olivier Rousteing admits that he can only invite 600 people to a fashion show, but online over 10 million people engage with his shows. Quarantine is making brands think about inclusivity. A merging of the physical with the digital means more people can experience their shows. The shakeup of the traditional world order means maybe new voices can come to the front, and have a platform they never previously had. With other cities like Copenhagen and Shanghai already becoming more important, the exclusivity of showing in just four major locations – London, Paris, Milan and New York – feels out-of-date.

The message in the fashion community is that shows have to change. They need to become more sustainable, more digital-first, maybe more unassuming, more inclusive.

Natacha Ramsay-Levi talks of the waste produced by all the fabric they pre-buy but they then don’t use. In the same way that they’re working to re-address this waste by re-using the fabrics, she says we don’t want to waste creativity. Fashion shows are a showcase of creativity of hundreds and hundreds of seamstresses, models, designers and photographers. Luxury fashion is about craft – they can’t just produce a product to come quickly to market in three months, for example. It takes time. In this era of lockdown where we appreciate the slow things, we can’t let this go unnoticed.

Fashion shows are, ultimately, a juggling act – it’s a difficult line between excess and necessity. “Everything will change after this,” Matthew Williamson says. “I mean, when in our lives has everything just pressed pause like this? Really, really paused?” With London and Paris men’s and Paris’ haute couture fashion weeks already cancelled, and fashion month in September up in the air, what lockdown will mean for fashion shows is the question on every designer’s mind. And the world, designers, is watching.