Fashion in the Time of Corona: What Can the Sociology of Fashion Reveal?

Covid-19 and fashion seem to go hand in hand – or rather, glove-in-glove – in these precarious times. The Covid-19 global situation has many sartorial fashion elements, some more obvious and reported, others more hidden and under-reported. These elements encompass both macro- and micro-levels of social life, haute couture and mass market clothing, production and consumption, raw materials and distribution networks, rich and poor people, short-term and long-term trends and consequences, and winners and losers. The fashion-related aspects of the crisis are simultaneously economic, cultural-aesthetic and political, local and national, as well as global and globalising. A fashion sociologist’s task in the time of Corona is therefore this: to recognise and record such elements, and to analyse their complex interconnections.