Maybe The Lockdown Wasn’t So Bad For Fashion’s Creativity After All

he first virtual fashion season is not quite over — Michael Kors and Tory Burch are set to show next week, and Raf Simons will launch a women’s line under his own name on October 23 — but it’s already clear that for some designers, the pandemic has been good for creativity. It’s forced them to think differently. “We don’t do it enough in fashion,” Stella McCartney said on a webinar with journalists. For years, McCartney showed during Paris Fashion Week, in the same location — the Opéra Garnier — even as she questioned why the industry clung to decades-old rituals. This time, though, she went to Houghton Hall, a stately home in Norfolk, England, known for its series of land art by Richard Long, and filmed her models on the lawn. She also produced an A-to-Z “manifesto” on sustainability — something she’s been talking about for a long time and that more and more brands practice. No one has changed more than John Galliano. Since becoming creative director of Martin Margiela in 2014, the former Dior designer has been virtually invisible, limiting contact with reporters and the public to a seasonal podcast. Anonymity is certainly part of Margiela’s story, pursued in the extreme by its founder. But Galliano is the English punk star with Spanish roots who in the ’90s turned the runway into theatre, with his own appearance at the end part of the comedy-drama. So the mask of Northern European reserve never fit. Read more at The Cut.