How street style changed fashion weeks, and why its future is in doubt as industry resets after the pandemic

The late photographer Bill Cunningham started a street style column documenting well-dressed fashion week show-goers in 1978 for The New York Times

Now, thanks to Instagram, self-promotion doesn’t have to wait for fashion week, so will the industry even miss street style amid coronavirus cancellations?

4-MIN READ4-MIN

Korean-American model and DJ Park Soo-joo during Paris Fashion Week in January, 2019. With fashion weeks cancelled or forced online, the parades of street style outside brands’ catwalk shows have stopped for now. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 8:30pm, 6 Jul 2020Updated: 5:33pm, 7 Jul 2020

There’s one trend that fashion weeks across the globe consistently have in common: performative crowds of peacocking attendees. Every season, the industry moves between various cities – from Seoul to London – to see designers reveal their new collections in theatrical catwalk shows and presentations, but the real show is on the streets outside.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the usual fashion week routine of crowds piling into venues, sitting thigh-to-thigh and squashing to fit onto rows of wooden blocks is no longer safe. Showing online has been the only option, as Shanghai did in late March, Moscow in April, and London in June, and as Milan plans to do this month. Others, including Seoul, have been cancelled entirely.

Even the shows that will take place physically, such as Dior’s Cruise2021 show later this month, plan to be audience-free. The curtains have closed on the seasonal street-style circus.

Photographers shooting people’s looks outside the heavily guarded venues became a defining element of the fashion week economy, with influencers frequently dressed by designers for promotion, and other fame-hungry guests yearning to be shot and subsequently featured in top publications to carve their personal brands. Photographers sell photos, influencers sell clothes.

A guest at Paris Fashion Week 2020. Influencers are frequently dressed by designers for promotion. Photo: Scott Schuman

This exhibitionist parade didn’t begin until 35 years after the first fashion week was held, when the late photographer Bill Cunningham started a street style column documenting well-dressed showgoers in 1978 for The New York Times.

“We all get dressed for Bill,” editor-in-chief of American Vogue Anna Wintour confessed in the 2011 documentary Bill Cunningham New York, “It’s always one snap, two snaps. Or he ignores you, which is death.”