As we all know by now, fashion week is cancelled for the foreseeable future. While we’ll miss it, it’s the right choice — packing 500 people into a room like sardines during a raging pandemic is not, after all, very chic. Still, designers haven’t stopped making clothes, and those clothes, somehow, need to be shown.
So far, short-term answers to the questions on the future of the fashion show have mostly centred on virtual experiences — individual brands livestreaming catwalks from empty venues, or even fully-fledged, fashion council-organised showcases. Still, no one seems to have cracked the code as to how to bring the excitement that comes with physically attending a show to a world where we all have to keep two metres apart. Until now, that is.
New York-based Pyer Moss has announced a drive-in event during the city’s fashion week in September. Ambitious a plan as it sounds, Kerby Jean-Raymond, the brand’s founder and creative director, has always been one to go big — the choral spectacle he put on for 3000 attendees last September a case in point.
Rather than present a new collection, the event will see the release of American, Also, a feature-length documentary that traces the two years that led up to that show in Brooklyn, accompanied by a drop of new clothing.
Current logistical challenges faced along fashion supply chains aside, the decision not to produce and show a whole new body of work echoes the uptick in calls for the industry to slow things down. “We’ve been slowing down the speed of how much we produce and improving the quality of what we produce throughout the years,” Kerby told Vogue. “This film aims to show the love and care our entire company puts into every single moment we create.”
Sounds up your street? Good news! You just might be able to park up, too — as with Pyer Moss events in the past, a number of guestlist spots will be reserved for members of the public.