Skip to main content

How the Fashion Industry Is Stepping Up to Fight COVID-19

giorgio armani storefront italy closed coronavirus
A Giorgio Armani storefront sits closed in Venice, Italy on March 21, 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Giacomo Cosua/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Fashion, like most industries, has been severely impacted by COVID-19, as brick-and-mortar stores shutter across the world to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic. But even as brands face dwindling profits and potential layoffs, some of the biggest retailers are allocating their resources to help combat the crisis by providing masks, gloves, and disinfectant gels to ease hospital shortages.

Case in point: H&M is using its supply chain in China, India, and Vietnam to donate protective equipment for healthcare workers in the European Union.

Related Videos

“The EU has asked us to share our purchasing operations and logistics capabilities in order to source supplies, but in this urgent initial phase, we will donate the supplies,” an H&M spokesperson told Reuters on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Inditex, owner of Zara, will be using its factories in Spain to provide urgent supplies such as masks, gloves, and face shields to Spanish hospitals. The company told Vogue on Wednesday that it plans to donate over 300,000 surgical masks in the next few weeks.

The two fast fashion brands’ contributions come on the heels of other conglomerates who have been stepping up to the cause. LVMH, which owns luxury houses Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and Marc Jacobs, has converted its perfume factories to produce hand sanitizers that will be delivered to French authorities and hospitals.

“LVMH intends to help address the risk of a lack of product in France, and enable a greater number of people to continue to take the right action to protect themselves from the virus,” the company wrote in a press release.

Its competitor Kering, which oversees brands Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, also promised to donate 3 million masks to French hospitals, according to the Business of Fashion. Meanwhile, Gucci, which is also owned by Kering, plans to distribute over 1 million masks and 55,000 pairs of medical gloves in Italy. Fellow Italian designer Giorgio Armani has donated $1.3 million to local hospitals.

“What worries me most is the health emergency that’s taking place, both in our country and all over the world,” Armani told Forbes. “It’s too early to evaluate the long-term economic impact, which will surely be significant. But history teaches us that new opportunities are born from the deepest moments of crisis.”

So far, COVID-19 has spawned over 300,000 infections worldwide, according to data from John Hopkins University. And as cases continue to spike, hopefully, more designers and retailers will join ranks.

Editors' Recommendations

Nike Will Donate $5.5 million in Shoes and Clothes to Healthcare Workers
Nike Headquarters

Nike is continuing to step up its efforts to help fight COVID-19.

The activewear company announced on Monday, May 4 that it would be partnering with nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and Europe to donate 140,000 pieces of merchandise in the form of shoes and clothes to frontline healthcare workers around the world.

Read more
8 Quarantine Style Inspirations from Celebrities on Instagram
Alex Rodriguez Work-From-Home Style

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the world is adjusting to the “new normal” of life indoors to avoid further spreading the virus. This shift has affected the way we eat, socialize, and (my specialty) — dress. Suddenly, calculating an outfit went from a creative process of sleek, polished, and professional looks to, "How many days can I wear these sweatsuits?!"

But a lighthearted upshot of this pandemic is that thanks to Instagram, we're seeing that celebrities are just like us, working from home in comfortable and fashionable quarantine clothes. Ahead are some of our favorite star-studded fits, and where to cop them. Feel free to jot down a few notes for tomorrow’s outfit of the day. You might feel a tad bit more productive and eager to speak up on those Zoom meetings.
Alex Rodriguez
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-c5OglAQ9_/

Read more
What to Know About Wearing a Face Mask for Coronavirus
Man wears cloth face mask

For men, it’s generally held that fewer accessories are better: grab a good watch, a signet (or wedding) ring, and maybe a tasteful pair of cufflinks to complete your outfit. That advice seems even more apropos for today’s work-from-home style, where a reliable pair of noise-cancelling earbuds may seemingly be the only essential accessory. But COVID-19 has other ideas for us: Last week, the Centers for Disease Control recommended that we all wear “cloth face coverings" outside in order to slow the coronavirus' spread. However, scarce surgical masks and N-95 respirators should be left to healthcare workers who need them most.
Why We Should Be Wearing Face Masks
In an NPR interview on Monday; Dr. Harvey Fineberg of the National Academies Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases explained that the COVID-19 virus can be spread by droplets. “You know when someone is shouting in your face or talking at you, or laughing and you feel the spray? That's a large droplet.”

Fineberg went on to explain that we also create tiny droplets when we talk and breath, creating “bioaerosol particles.” Those can float around, never dropping to the ground. “It’s important that, in closed spaces like patient care rooms, our health care professionals have the right goggles as well as the masks,” he says. Wearing a protective covering, even if it's just a cloth mask, can help prevent those droplets from spreading.

Read more