The show must go on : LFW goes digital

In light of the British Fashion Council’s announcement on Tuesday that London’s Spring/Summer 2021 menswear collections in June will be presented on a new digital platform, the British capital’s designers are now faced with the opportunity to redefine what the industry will look like post-pandemic. At present, little is known about how London Fashion Week will operate in its new form—Vogue reports that it’s likely to consist of virtual showrooms and digital lookbooks, following in the footsteps of digital editions of Shanghai, Tokyo and Moscow Fashion Weeks in the two months since the pandemic began. But by going digital, arguably, this new edition of LFW—the first major fashion week to do so— might prove to be one of fashion’s greatest social equalisers, benefitting creativity, the environment, and beyond. 

The online world has oft been praised for its democratising potential, and while the fashion industry’s elitist reputation precedes itself, LFW’s digital migration means that, theoretically, you could share the same front row view as Anna Wintour at any show you please. Not only that, but a digitised fashion week has the potential to reach an infinite number of punters—reportedly viewing figures for Shanghai Fashion Week in early April, for example, reached a high of 2.5 million. Provided sufficient technical demands are accounted for, digital showcases may also offer a viable, environmentally-conscious alternative for editors and buyers. It will be considerably easier to offset the carbon footprint of the industry if intuitive digital experiences let key industry players do their jobs via screens from their homes.

This redefinition of the ‘front row’ may also trigger a reassessment of the tiresome influencer marketing ploys that have become widespread in the industry—it’s the norm for famous faces to occupy front row seats, draped in the latest season’s wears. If we are ready to let go of this form of marketing, new and more innovative means may emerge by embracing technology such as virtual reality. One need look no further than Moscow Fashion Week, where virtual Russian influencer Aliona Pole was named an ambassador and utilised her platform to showcase a digital capsule collection. 

Already there have been some examples of digital clothing technologies that functionally exist—LFW ‘attendees’ may be able try garments virtually via filters (Virgil Abloh has previously offered neon Off-White sunglasses from his SS19 womenswear show in the form of an Instagram filter). While this may feel like a groovy-yet-gimmicky feature, there’s room for retailers to explore direct-to-consumer routes. Direct-to-consumer functionality was visible at Shanghai Fashion Week— a likely consequence of being hosted by the popular Chinese e-commerce platform Tmall—with some shows integrated with purchasing functions harking back to the QVC-heydey of television shopping channels. For a LFW audience that expects boundless creativity, this may feel kitsch at best and crass at worst, but lest we forget that fashion weeks function as trade shows as much as they do artistic spectacles.

The digital reinvention of the June edition of LFW will also be gender-agnostic, platforming menswear, womenswear, and genderless labels. Whilst Burberry has shown co-ed collections in recent seasons, typically the London schedule has been separated into menswear and womenswear presentations (although it has increasingly championed androgynous and genderless styles and silhouettes). By bringing men’s, women’s and genderless lines together, tired gendered constructs are forgone as well as meaning less shows to create—the positive environmental impact of which cannot be stressed enough. To compound matters, Marc Jacobs outlined the exhausting nature of the traditional fashion week structure, which may, too, become a thing of the past—“We’ve done everything to such excess that there is no consumer for all of it, and everyone is exhausted by it. It’s all become a chore.” Although London’s designers find themselves in a difficult ‘adapt or die’ situation right now, should they survive, they will have paved the way for the fashion landscape post-pandemic, whatever and whenever that may be.