Fashion Shows Are Now 12-Hour Live Streams. Or Movies Starring Mermaids. Or Mailed To You In A Box.

The digital fashion presentations in Paris and Milan that spanned the last two weeks — and replaced the usual live runway shows for fall haute couture and menswear, as well as women’s resort collections — weren’t physically exhausting, but they were mentally numbing: the live streams, music videos, short movies and Zoom conversations with designers trying to work through what this moment in history means creatively, psychologically and financially. As a viewer trying to absorb it all, the days felt like an emotional roller coaster where the rare live fashion show — outdoors with mask-wearing guests — could feel simultaneously admirable and reckless, even when watched on a screen. One could delight in technology that brought one behind the scenes, only to realize that a lot of what happens in the shadows of a fashion show is as excruciating as watching waiting people wait. Or, more precisely, during Gucci’s 12-hour live stream it meant watching an assistant fan a model wearing fall clothes on a hot summer day so he didn’t pass out. The myth is far more exciting than the mythmaking. Read more at The Washington Post.