The lockdown caused by the invisible enemy of 2020, Covid-19, taught us a big lesson in a drastic, but necessary, way. In a few days, it has obliged us to stay home and to go out just for strictly necessary matters. It has stopped the rush of our lives, deleted the pollution, blocked the excess and that got us thinking. While forced at home with our close family members, boy/girlfriend, roommates or alone, we had to adapt to a new life that gave us time to breathe, to question. It seems like Dante poetic justice. Right in this apocalyptic scenario that our sons and grandsons will study in their schooling, the call to slow down comes from everywhere. Even from fashion, a field that in these past years has been part of an unstoppable acceleration that has badly impacted the environment, used cheap labor, and transformed us in everything now slaves. The big voices of the Italian fashion system have risen to rethink the relationship between seasonality and fashion bringing into play the adoption of the Italian slow fashion that aims at a responsible consumption. Discover more by clicking the button below >
This sudden slowdown let us re-appreciate the beauty of the little things for which we did not have time or things we forgot about. For this reason, Italian fashion wanted to learn at least a positive lesson from this tragic moment to make sense of it. The field of fashion has reflected on the disease of its system that contributed to infect the society, together with many other factors. Among the most powerful and notable members of the Italian fashion, someone had already recognized the Coronavirus as a strong enemy. This led to the difficult, but proper, decision to hold shows behind closed doors during the last fashion week. It was not a decision for its own sake, but the beginning of a real revolution to bring back to light the haute couture as we used to know it. The King of fashion, Giorgio Armani, decided to expose himself. The Italian designer addresses the Americans inviting them to learn a positive lesson from such a critical historical time and to understand the necessity of slowing down the unsustainable rhythm of fashion. The manifesto of King Giorgio is welcomed by some of his reputable colleagues, from Donatella Versace to Rick Owens, from Elisabetta Franchi to Marco Baldassarri of Eleventy.
The designer highlights also the complete loss of the fashion system’s seasonality and the futility to deliver to the shops the spring-summer collections in February and the fall-winter ones in August. How many people really need a coat in midsummer or have the necessity to fill their wardrobes with light dresses in February? Anyone, but it happens that we do that because we are overwhelmed with the anxiety, the fear of staying one step behind and, even if this has become the rule, it does not mean it is normal.
In his manifesto, the designer does not specifically use the word slow fashion. However, he appeals to the resurgence of that kind of system. People are going to re-appreciate that fashion, because all of us learned the importance to slow down and of the futility to satisfy all our needs immediately, but there is also something more. Now the word needs beauty more than ever, that beauty that requires time and inspiration. We won’t need Pre-Collection anymore, but we will prefer to wait for the main collections with the desire to see on the catwalks magnificent dresses that have been designed without the stress of the clock but following the inspiration and with a lot of passion and care.
The slow fashion movement started in 2007 with Kate Fletcher from the influence of the slow food by Carlo Petrini. A movement that contrasts with fast fashion and that defends the ethic and sustainable fashion before the introduction of serial production. One of the key points of this movement is quality vs quantity. Slow fashion invites us to be careful and responsible consumers who do not buy because they want, but because they really need it. Fast fashion makes us believe that we need wardrobes full of cloths to show a different outfit every day. It has turned us into obsessive consumers who buy a lot and spend a little with the wrong idea that even if what I buy is of poor quality or it becomes out of fashion next season, at least I have invested little money in it! This novelty-need disease and the obsession to be always up to the last trend has deleted our interest to know where has been produced the t-shirt that we are wearing, who has sewn our pants and which cotton has been used to make our shirt. From the 8th of February 2011, the CNA Torino has registered the common trademark Slow Fashion that assures the origin, quality, and nature of the Italian manufacturing to preserve itself from the common lack of consciousness. An enterprise that has been pushed by the Italian need to characterize its fashion that is envied all over the world.
Now it is the moment to regain the consciousness of the value of what we buy and what we wear. So, if not now, when?
Written by @saranapolitano
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