THERE’S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT 2020 Why I’m Releasing a Digital Comedy Show Rather Than Participating in Fashion Week. An Open Letter by Zero Waste Daniel:

THERE’S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT 2020

Why I’m Releasing a Digital Comedy Show Rather Than Participating in Fashion Week.  

An Open Letter by Zero Waste Daniel:

In mid-March, when New York’s non-essential business shutdown was first announced, I had already been on the hamster wheel of fashion for over a decade. Pandemic aside, a mandatory two week stop-down felt like a scary, but dare I say, welcomed change of pace. 

Making and selling clothes out of upcycled fabric scraps in my Brooklyn storefront is a world away from holding down a corporate 9 to 5 job. It's more of an all-consuming obsession, that requires as many hours as it takes to get the job done everyday. So I thought that lowering the gate on my store for a few weeks, while I worked from home in an effort to ‘flatten the curve,’ would be completely manageable for me and my business. 

For the first time since launching my brand, Zero Waste Daniel, I had some reserves to weather the storm. I finally had a direct to consumer business that was making consistent sales and getting some real buzz. I had just come off of my 4th, and largest, installment of my Fashion Week series, Sustainable Fashion is Hilarious, an unconventional fashion/comedy show, and my way of participating in Fashion Week, without participating in Fashion Week. This season’s theme was “The Death of Fashion.” 

The show featured models clad head to toe in my newest offerings, scattered throughout Arcadia Earth, a 15-room climate change museum. It wasn’t a runway or a presentation. It was a staged protest against greed, and a mock funeral for what it once meant to be a great fashion designer. The models were more than living hangers, they were activists. They marched back and forth with signs demanding to know, “Who killed fashion?”  In one room, they showed you how to make an apocalypse survival kit; in another, two model’s led a seance to conjure old trends. There was a guest book where people could leave their sympathies next to an altar covered in photos of great designers and brands gone too soon. Everyone at the show was in the show. The Death of Fashion was a whole mood that night. 

In the final room, before guests left, in lieu of the customary designer’s bow, I read a eulogy for a comically long list of trends no longer considered en vogue. 

As people passed through the exit, without being prompted, they began paying their last respects. Some jokingly hugged me and offered condolences. Others did so seriously.

It was a show, an event, a collection, a party, a performance, and one of our last nights out in New York before COVID-19 hit our city. For me, it was also a catharsis. That night, I let go of my hopes and expectations of what my future in fashion might hold.

A few weeks later, I felt the first ripples of the pandemic. One day before the shutdown officially took effect, the owner of a sample room in Manhattan frantically called me. She told me that if I didn't come and pick up my unfinished goods within the hour, they would be padlocked inside the building indefinitely. 

I picked up the unfinished order. The next morning I went into autopilot. I put on a mask, went into my  workshop, and began to finish the job one piece at a time. The bulk of my next 2 weeks were not spent working from home, but in my closed store in front of a sewing machine attaching 600 patches to sweatshirts, while my husband, Mario, clipped threads and packed orders.

While sewing those patches, I thought back to 2011. That year I was a new independent designer, who had just gotten my first large wholesale order.  I didn’t have the money to produce any goods up-front, nor was I doing the kind of volume that a factory would take on. Rather than cancel the order, I sat in my studio and sewed up 100 dresses myself. That time it was my mother who clipped the threads and packed the orders.

Now in 2020, as I attached the final patches to my project, in my shut down store, in the middle of a pandemic that had already affected so many, so deeply...I felt a familiar feeling. 

It was the need to survive. When I shipped that order in 2011, I felt like I had walked through a gauntlet. 2020 is a more complicated world with higher stakes. This time, I knew I could ship the order, that was the easy part. Now, I had to focus on things even more important than what happens next with my brand. This is about actual survival. 

So what if I would never be a designer who shows their collections at Bryant Park or Lincoln Center. I no longer cared that I would never sell to Barney’s. They are the victims of the times. My sights have moved on from those outdated symbols of success. 

In 2020, survival is success. And with an industry in flux and an uptick in “no new clothes” pledges and sustainability challenges, how do I design for people who are not buying?

How do you feed people who are full?

You don't. You entertain them. It’s the classic “dinner and a movie.” People are stuffed to the gills with clothing, but they’re hungry for entertainment. “More content please!” From tik tok tutorials to reality tv, consumers want fashion all over their screens. The demands of design are evolving. This season’s push towards digital is the perfect time for me to get my show out of fashion week altogether and into a new format where it can reach more people, make more change, do more good, and create less waste.  

The show is the product. This collection will be a hybrid series, a mix of clothing and content for sale.

Tickets for the first show will be released later this week, and the clothing in it will follow. It won’t be just for New Yorkers or fashion people, but for anyone, anywhere, who’s looking for a little entertainment and a laugh.  And if you do find yourself with a craving for clothing, I'm still here surviving and making sweatshirts and joggers out of scraps. 

Submitted September 16, 2020 at 12:37PM by zerowastedaniel https://ift.tt/2ZInyz8