Tanya Taylor, New York
Want to watch Hillary Clinton play fetch with her dog? You will have had your chance online yesterday. Designer Tanya Taylor forwent her spot on the New York Fashion Week calendar to host a celebrity filled online voter registration drive, made up of 12 two-minute, home-filmed videos streaming on the official NYFW platform NYFW.com and Taylor’s own website and Instagram. It included a fetch-playing session by Clinton, who was wearing one of Taylor’s designs, as well as comedian and actor Mindy Kaling who will be watering her plants and retired Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan making tea.
In making each film two minutes, Taylor is reminding viewers that registering to vote requires only as much time as it takes to watch each of these celebrities do the most mundane of tasks. “Our customers have a sense of humour, and I think we all need a laugh with what’s going on,” says Taylor. “I just love how this series is both humorous and highly political.”
At the end of each video there will be a click-through link that will take viewers to the official government voting registration page.
This isn’t the first time Taylor, whose eponymous brand is known for its colourful print dresses and separates, has injected a bit of humour into fashion week. In lieu of a catwalk show in February, which would have cost at least $200,000, she created a comedic set of five films that poked fun at the absurdities of the fashion world.
“So often what you see on the runway is never even produced, so what’s the point? And your customers are not even the ones who attend the show — that disconnect makes no sense to me,” says Taylor.
Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, creative directors of Oscar de la Renta and Monse, New York
“I’ve been running loads and Laura has become a gastronomic chef,” Fernando Garcia, co-creative director of Oscar de la Renta and Monse, says of the renewed creativity that he and partner Laura Kim discovered under lockdown. Although they are not staging a fashion show this September, they are still busy creating Oscar de la Renta’s bridal collection, and designing their Spring/Summer 2021 collections, which will be shown to press and buyers in October.
“As I am not travelling for events or to factories, I really have time to consider the product, and spend time doing things like painting our own prints — we never had time to do this before,” says Kim. She and Garcia have also taken up ceramics, with the intention of creating their own buttons. “We can actually enjoy being a designer a little bit more,” says Kim. For Garcia, opting out of the show schedule has given him and Kim the chance to think about brand DNA. “This is something designers should be focusing on, making quintessential items for their brand. Customers are more discerning due to Covid-19 and the world is totally different now, so we have to reflect that within the clothes,” he says. They have also begun to address the carbon footprint of their businesses choosing to ship products for Oscar de la Renta rather than transport via air.
Will they return to the catwalk in February? “We’re not sure yet,” says Kim. “The show season never really worked for anyone really. I just hope someone makes a change.”
Thom Browne, Paris
When it comes to performance, Browne is one of fashion’s kings. His February show was a winter wonderland featuring pine trees dusted in white powder snow and models on stilts wearing animal masks in perfectly tailored boating blazers and shorts.
But that was before Covid-19. This fashion week his usual pageantry will come in a new form: a film. Browne is mysterious when it comes to the details of his cinematic project, which will stream during Paris Fashion Week.
“I can’t tell you too much, but the film will show all 40 looks of my Spring/Summer 2021 collection. It is being filmed in an exotic location and it’s going to be magical.”
It will be a sequel to his Autumn/Winter 2020 collection, showing men’s and women’s looks together. “I feel I can focus more when my male and female shows are not together — but this has been such a good project for me, combining the two,” he says. Browne will host a physical runway show in February if he is able. “Nothing beats the magic of having a real audience,” he says.
Bethany Williams, London
“I was exhausted after last year. Before Covid-19 I felt a lack of control, but lockdown brought it back. It made me ask — do I really want to be a part of this fashion system?”
Williams, 27, is speaking over Zoom from her temporary studio — which also doubles as her living room. The winner of the 2019 Queen Elizabeth II Award for Design has decided to not show a film or catwalk show for her Spring/Summer 2021 collection this London Fashion Week.
Instead, she will be hosting an exhibition titled All Our Children at Somerset House in aid of the Magpie Project, an organisation that helps homeless women with young children. To mark the opening, Williams will raise a flag that she has created for Somerset House before an audience made up of mothers and children looked after by the Magpie Project.
The exhibition will also include clothes designed by Williams: 10 unisex adult and three children’s looks cut from donated and deadstock Adidas fabric, and other organic and recycled material. These will be accompanied by a short film showing Williams’s processes. “I have more projects like this in the pipeline,” she says, referring to the combination of art and fashion. “I also hope that the industry in general will be kinder to one another, the pandemic has taught us we need to be more aware.”
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