Saint Laurent abandons 2020 fashion week calendar

Even if the fashion world begins to react to the Crisis of the Covid-19 through digital initiatives, as has already happened for London Fashion Week, Saint Laurent is pulling back from all possible pre-fixed schedules for the rest of the year. In fact, the brand has announced that it will follow its independent schedule for the presentation of collections this year:

“Now more than ever, the brand will lead its own rhythm, legitimating the value of time and connecting with people globally by getting closer to them in their own space and lives. With this strategy firmly in place, Saint Laurent will not present its collections in any of the pre-set schedules of 2020. Saint Laurent will take ownership of its calendar and launch its collections following a plan conceived with an up-to-date perspective, driven by creativity”.

The announcement seems to be deliberately vague in practical terms, but underlines a certain distrust of the brand towards alternative initiatives and surrogates of the classic fashion week shows. The importance that the communiqué gives to the independence of the brand both in creative terms and production mark-ups could be read as the first sign of a new approach to fashion presentations, slower and more organic than the classic one, characterized by more precise and tight rhythms. It remains to be seen how and when the brand will reorganize its collections as well as the schedule that the fashion industry French will decide to follow for the rest of the year.

Saint Laurent therefore seems to want to move within that system of values outlined by Giorgio Armani in his letter to WWD, in which he blamed the decline of the luxury sector for the preponderance of commercial needs at the expense of creativity:

"The decline of the fashion system, as we know it, began when the luxury industry adopted the operational modes of fast fashion with the continuous delivery cycle, in the hope of selling more."

In this light, Saint Laurent's decision to follow the needs of creativity becomes the claim of its own space, as well as the signal of a positive change in the production of luxury clothing, which adapting to the new shopping habits of its customers will no longer have to present four collections in a year but can focus more on the product and return to emphasize quality rather than quantity.