In the post-pandemic world more people will reach the shocking realisation way faster, that nobody needs a dozen pairs of shoes or a new dress every weekend. (Photo: Damini Ralleigh)
For the first time in my life, I applied hair dye (on my own) at home. Other than a temporary brown shadow around my forehead, created by my ham-handed application, the results are perfectly satisfactory. In fact, it has struck me how much more cost-effective it is than the Rs 2,200 plus tip I spend every six weeks at the salon. I have also watched a couple of YouTube videos on how to shape one’s eyebrows; but being a hopeless klutz, I daren’t risk a Dr Spock like situation.
Perhaps, for a few services, the salon will continue to be necessary. But, for me, not many. I feel bad for the hardworking couple who run the salon I have frequented for years; lakhs of people like me are reevaluating their expenses going forward. If there’s anything this lockdown has achieved, it’s a global introspection on discretionary spending. So many of us feel very vulnerable in this climate of terrible uncertainty. Perhaps, it’s an instinctive human reaction when the world is turning upside down, to lay low and conserve because who knows what calamity lies ahead. The days turned into weeks, now, it has been more than a month of bad news without a break.
You turn off the lights to go to sleep after hearing news of the dead, and you wake up to the newspaper, to read more about people on the verge of death. Through the day you hear stories of survival under horrific circumstances or the rising death toll around the world. This relentless hammering is showing no signs of ending, instead, there seems to be a looming threat of Darwinian wisdom: only the fittest will survive.
There is no doubt that this gloomy atmosphere will pervade the rest of the year. Brace for more depressing news of a recessionary landscape, job losses and businesses winding up. At the same time, humanity is taking stock of this truly unique moment. The plus, if any, is a growing antipathy towards wastage. Take fashion for instance. For a while now there has been a war cry directed towards sustainability and a rising awareness of what fast fashion does to the environment. The pandemic has brought production worldwide to a screeching halt. While the sweatshops operating for Zara and H&M in China and Bangladesh were awful at the best of times, right now, they don’t meet basic standards of ventilation and social distancing required to stave away the coronavirus.
The pandemic is exposing the fault lines in fashion, whether it’s the state of the labour or the inexplicable lie we all bought into, that trends must change every season. Post Corona, just like that, terms like ‘trend forecasting’ and ‘spring-summer’ collection are outdated, a thing of the past. Because the reality is that there’s going to be no restaurant visits, parties or lavish weddings, so does anybody actually need new stuff? Masked, will women need lipstick? Not for the next year for sure. So much about fashion depends on other people seeing you. The absence of social life changes everything. And if it goes on for too long and people get used to less, it becomes a way of life.
In the post-pandemic world more people will reach the shocking realisation way faster, that nobody needs a dozen pairs of shoes or a new dress every weekend. In the last few weeks we’ve been repeatedly exposed to the contradiction between our lives of excess and the paucity of PPE and masks, that has had devastating consequences. For years there was talk on how we’re wrecking the planet for future generations. It took an invisible virus to shift the focus from humanity’s frivolous needs towards what really matters.