5-metre pedestals, an Anna Wintour puppet… COVID-19 changed fashion shows but the runway will survive – MENAFN.COM

5-metre pedestals, an Anna Wintour puppet… COVID-19 changed fashion shows but the runway will survive – MENAFN.COM

( MENAFN - The Conversation Australian Fashion Week, which starts next Monday, is touting itself as one of the first live fashion shows since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Runway shows will fea)ture labels Romance Was Born and Zimmermann as well as younger designers. For decades, journalists, editors, buyers, celebrities and taste-makers would descend twice a year on Paris, New York, London and Milan to attend the famous fashion weeks, where global and emerging designers present new collections in runway shows. Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul and Moscow have joined these four global fashion centres, along with Australian cities. Fashion shows began in the early 1900s. Their primary purpose has always been about promoting and selling new product. (The fundamental rule of fashion is endless change and newness.) The pandemic has changed things, forcing them online. But the world of high fashion had already been experimenting with technology on the catwalk “” from launching handbags and frocks attached to drones to presenting a digital show beamed to viewers with 3D glasses. In the early 2000s, runway shows were grand spectacles. In 2005, Chanel began using Paris's Grand Palais as a set on which Karl Lagerfeld envisaged grandiose installations recreating microcosms of everyday life.