Coronavirus badly impact fashion and lifestyle

A year of being in the grips of a global pandemic has impacted every aspect of our lives, right down to the way we dress. Being asked to stay home and abandon life as we knew it in March 2020 changed the contents of our wardrobes and how we shop in ways we could never have foreseen before Covid took hold.

Who could have guessed that the humble track pant would become the It buy of 2020? The fashion industry itself has changed irrevocably in response to both economic downturn and the cancellation of a schedule of lucrative events and shows - some labels and high street stalwarts were lost, while other brands had to dramatically pivot their aesthetic to survive.

As our social freedoms are slowly restored with the announcement of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, the fashion world is on tenterhooks as to how the industry and its consumers will respond. Is our 180 on formal wear and a year of fast fashion backlash just the start of a sartorial revolution? Or will we slide comfortably back into old habits as our lives begin to resemble something closer to normal once more?

As Isabella West, a former economist and the founder of fashion rental platform Hirestreet, points out: “There is still a lot of uncertainty as to what consumer behaviour will look like post-pandemic. Even the best trend-forecasters will struggle to accurately predict what happens next in the wake of such fundamental behavioural shifts.” Perhaps our best chances of understanding how a post-pandemic future of fashion may look then, is it to refer to the past.

Designers love to borrow from bygone eras, and just as the 1920s has been referenced repeatedly for how our social lives may return to a roaring start in June, it’s likely we can learn a lot about style as well from the period that followed the Spanish Flu of 1918.

Of course, there is the obvious parallel that the 1920s were a period when the world was recovering from a major human catastrophe – the Spanish flu infected a predicted 500 million globally and saw 50m deaths. But furthermore, just like 2020, it was also a time of accelerated social and economic change.

In the UK all women won the right to vote in 1928 (a decade after those under 30 who met certain property qualifications had been granted enfranchisement) and had gained a more active role in the economy after taking on jobs previously reserved for men during the war. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the beginning of the Great Depression, which led to years of economic uncertainty.