Post 37 - April 17, 2020
Day 37…
“If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
Store windows along Madison Avenue and up and down Columbus are full of the latest spring fashions.
Gathering dust.
Easter decorations, unsold and unneeded this year, sit behind glass.
The display window of the Duane Reade near us has a proud mountain of paper towels and toilet paper on display these days.
Who ever thought that would be something that would lure you into a store?
I’m guessing that the spring fashions sitting forgotten in those windows began life in a designer’s notebook a couple of years ago.
The ideas were pitched.
The ones that were accepted got mocked up.
Notes were given, the mock-ups were adjusted.
Versions were built for a runway show.
The ones that were received well went into design revisions and production for mass-market distribution.
Clothes based on those designs were made in factories (mostly overseas) by an army of workers (probably underpaid) and transported back here to the US in huge container ships.
Stores who decided that they could sell those designs, ordered quantities of them and put them on display.
Now they are just sitting there.
When those stores reopen it is unlikely to still be spring.
It is unlikely that anybody will ever buy any of the entire line of this year’s spring fashions.
Some designer’s big break was supposed to happen with this year’s spring collection. Will they get another shot later or was that it?
When this is over, we are probably not going to want the same things that we did before this started. Our tastes are changing.
Are we going to want to see all of the dark, gritty shows that were in rehearsal or previews before Broadway closed or, instead, like after 9/11 are we going to want to escape to an island in Greece and listen to ABBA songs?
Those shows that we may never see now have been in development for years.
Producers and creatives have to bet on what they think people are going to want to see several years ahead before they start putting a show together.
In many cases, many dollars, sometimes millions, have been spent and countless weeks and months of development and rehearsal have happened before a single theatre-goer walks in and sits down in a seat waiting for the show to start.
What are we going to want to see after all of this time living in anxiety?
What are we going to want to wear after weeks and months of sweatpants and t-shirts.
Where are people going to want to go after this and how willing will they be to be near other people?
You’d better believe that those discussions are currently happening.
Whatever is decided in these meetings going on now is what we are going to be told is what we want.
The great advertising machine will get behind the ideas that are just starting to come to light now and push them relentlessly our way to convince us that it was our idea to want these things in the first place.
Some will be successful and some we will resist no matter how hard we are sold on the idea.
The problem with all of the planning currently going on is that nobody knows how this will end. Nobody knows WHEN this will end.
Summer fashions were probably already in the factories and warehouses when everything ground to a halt.
By now, they’d be in the stores, the spring stock long since sold or remaindered.
Should there be plans for a fall line?
Will we be back out and about by then?
Give up and go straight to winter?
The fashion industry alone employs hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Far more than that when all of the related business fold in, millions.
These decisions matter to all of them.
How does the industry make these decisions with all of the unknowns we are facing?
In the rural areas of the US, not yet hard-hit by COVID-19, people are starting to protest the stay-at-home orders.
In Michigan, a group of unmasked angry protesters rallied at the State Capitol building in Lansing demanding that the restrictions be lifted.
No social distancing.
Confederate flags and swastikas.
Chants of “Lock her up” directed towards Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
More protests erupted around the country.
The pressure on Governors to reopen their states is going to be enormous.
It’s going to get ugly.
It started to get ugly yesterday.
How do you tell people that live in rural areas far away from other people that they have to be shut down for the good of all?
On FOX TV Dr. Oz advocated the re-opening of schools yesterday, saying that the 2-3% mortality rate was acceptable.
That’s anywhere between six and nine million people in the US.
By late afternoon, he’d back tracked and apologized but he’d already said it and he’s not the only one thinking it by far.
People are listening to Dr. Oz.
People are listening to the President who wants to open things back up in less than two weeks.
We all want to go back to work.
We all want to be able to start planning again.
Summer’s coming.
But if we don’t stay this course summer will come and go and we will be right back to where we are now.
Wow, do I not envy any of our Governors.
Keeping us safe and getting us back is going to be HARD.
The biggest obstacle?
All of us.
We are going to screw it up.
We have to be patient.
And calm.
And reasonable.
I am living on the Upper West Side in Manhattan in a comfortable apartment.
I have the mortgage money. For now, anyway.
I have food on the table.
Very easy for me to say.
I do understand that.
So, how does this get said to everybody who is truly suffering and in need when all they want is for this to be over.
We can’t blame them for it.
They are terrified.
They are going to rebel.
I fear its coming.
Yesterday was just the beginning.
Six to nine million people, however, is just not anything we should be even considering.
Bottom line, that’s the choice.
Hold on or kill six to nine million people.
For all of our sake’s, please let’s just hold on and not make any plans.
Yet.