Fashion and the coronavirus: dress up or stay in pajamas' Chic

We are facing the most austere fashion. And it is that, a few days ago, my dear Carmen Lomana told (in her daily stories), that she appreciated in her friends a total lack of sophistication in her image. And by sophistication I don't mean elegance but the complexity of creating something in non-verbal language that goes beyond comfort as a result of doing absolutely nothing. Despite the fact that nothingness is relative (there are those who have children or twice as much work to telecommute). Who pretends, perhaps, to believe that to clean the living room we need some heels?

But I also understand her speech in reverse: the need to dress up to feel better, more personal and social and not an isolated character in quarantine. Yesterday I got dressed just to go to the pharmacy: shadow here, shadow there, and up the eyelash!

Fashion "is" less fashionable than ever. More supportive. Since 11M that fashion does not look at society. Because this industry suffers from 'enlightened elitism': everything for the people but without the people. Or the 80-20 rule: only 20% of Vogue readers can afford 80% of the content that the mythical magazine proposes. Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Dior, Chanel… insert double-page fashion advertising, knowing that only a minority will be able to buy these products. But all this is not l'art pour l'art. All this generates the aspirational desire to want to have a 'little piece' of the luxury brand's logo. These big luxury brands then thrive, and many survive, on 'affordable luxury': perfumes. Few can afford to spend 2,000 euros on a Loewe bag, but most can buy the brand's perfume for 80. But now we don't smell anything. We smell fear, we smell boredom, we smell a 'false solidarity' that once put into practice, with or without cynicism, is useful and necessary. And applause.

For their part, the influencers get mad and dedicate themselves to teaching how they organize their cabinets and their beauty products, or they nominate each other to challenge them to give (stupid) touches to the toilet paper as if it were a soccer ball. Something that demonstrates the intellectual level of most of these prescribers or influences. The paper thing has ceased to have originality and grace: so stop with these memes.

This new stage that we are experiencing (in which 98% of the headlines speak of the Corona Virus), there will be no football, no polka dots with fringes for the April Fair, no executive suits with heart-stopping heels. Our wardrobe has been filled with pajamas, leggings, sweatshirts and comfortable clothes. And we will fix ourselves for and for the Instagram story or the purchase of the day.

@theporshaedmun Can I pick your brain? How do I Google how to become a notary in Texas? Please help me.

— Yaw Wed Mar 31 18:07:04 +0000 2021

And it is that the transformation in fashion is dictated by the times that are lived. Fashion in modern times has been a formula for creating dreams and recreating personalities, often fictitious. In times of crisis: wars, deep economic depressions, catastrophes... fashion moves to a second, third (or perhaps non-existent) level, and is at the service of survival and hygiene. We dressed for modesty and protection, but modesty has disappeared when partial nudity on Instagram became a trend. And the protection diminished when the male from the West has been able to go out into the street in the heat of the cold wave with skinny pants that reveal his absolutely unprotected ankles. Rather constipated than simple!

Cocó Chanel created tweed for sewing, as a democratic material; and early in her career she helped make uniforms for nurses during World War I. Fashion is deviated when misunderstood historical milestones occur in the present. Today fashion analysts appreciate that silk gloves have been replaced by latex or nitrile gloves; red lipstick, for masks; the miniature perfumes of our bags, for bottles of disinfectant gel. And so on. When the pandemic is "controlled", we will leave our homes with impossible manicures, legs full of hair, rusty highlights, with several extra kilos (and others less, because of the squats resulting from excess free time) , and with an anxiety never seen before: although also with more desire to live. I dare not say that fashion is turning black as it did in the September 11 attack. But it is being tinged with aesthetic nihilism.

And, meanwhile, Amancio Ortega has done it again: showing the most supportive side of fashion, donating 300,000 masks to Spanish health. And the socio-hypocritical-radicalists have also thrown it up again: criticizing this social action by Inditex.

In this line of solidarity, the influencer Madame de Rosa, Ángela (whom I know), got off her heels, took off her jewelry and put on her gown with her respective mask and gloves with a single purpose: to help save lives. in a crowded La Paz Hospital in Madrid since last Monday as a nurse. Fashion, beauty, lifestyle doesn't matter anymore. Prima save lives. Prima save Spain.

Where were we going in such a hurry, so proud of believing ourselves to be above good and evil and where will we go from now on! These are the questions with exclamation, and frustration everywhere, that we ask ourselves every day, and we still can't figure it out.