I come from a city called Dongguan in the southern part of China. If you know Hong Kong, it is a two hour drive away from where I lived. China is a big country and each province has its unique customs, especially food. I have been in America for four years. If I have to tell the reason why I will go back to China when I graduate, it will be I miss the food. During the 5000 years of Chinese history, our ancestors have developed countless delicious foods. There was one Canadian guy called Trevor James, who boasted that he could try all kinds of Chinese food within one year, starting from the city of Sichuan. However, six years have passed, he is still in Sichuan. The province where I come from is called Guangdong. It is basically the paradise of food. There is a saying that “Guangdong people eat anything that runs on the ground, flies in the sky, or swims in the water”. However, we do not eat spicy food or dogs. Saying Chinese eat dogs is a complete rumor. I have never seen anyone I know eat dogs. There is one district in Guangdong called Shunde, which is “regarded as the basis for exquisite Cantonese cuisine and the cradle of Cantonese cuisine chefs”. Just for fish, our Cantonese invented more than two hundred different dishes. Speaking of Cantonese, which is the dialect of Guangdong and Hong Kong, people there mention food even in their everyday conversation. For example, they say “have you eaten yet” as a greeting when two friends come across one another. Even when they are cursing someone they use food: “it is better to give birth to char siu than to give birth to you”, which means the kid is not filial to his parents. For me, my favorite part of Chinese food is surely Cantonese brunch. It is called “morning tea” in Chinese, but it is not about drinking tea. Countless delicious dishes are kept in bamboo steamers and put on small hand carts. The waiters will push the hand carts around the tables and ask the customers if they want anything. 
Link to Dior analysis: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1C_QuuySvVzLSuMI3YTobZX05TGJINvNhowy6_hrSVKY/edit?usp=sharing
The impact of COVID-19 on the French luxury and fashion industry
The prevalence of COVID-19, which stands for the coronavirus found in 2019, has caused a huge impact on people’s lives lately. People from all over the world are forced to stay at home and many stores have been shut down. The situation for the French luxury and fashion industry is even worse. Because the disease is highly contagious, many countries started to ban travelers from other countries to enter their borders, including France. The result of this is the sharp drop in tourism, which causes the decline of the luxury and fashion industry as it is dependent on tourism. “French luxury group Kering stated it expects a 15 percent comparable decline in its first quarter compared to 2019” (Adegeest). The Business of Fashion and McKinsey & Company examined the effect of COVID-19 and predicted that “revenues for the global fashion industry (apparel and footwear sectors) will contract by up to 30 percent in 2020 year-on-year, while the personal luxury goods industry (luxury fashion, luxury accessories, luxury watches, luxury jewelry, and high-end beauty), will contract up to 40 percent”. In addition to that, it predicted that after three months of closure, more than 80 percent of apparel and luxury companies in the United States, Canada, and Europe will suffer through financial distress.
A lot of french luxury and fashion brands knew that they could not sit there and do nothing, so they started to cooperate with the health organizations and charities to stop the situation from getting worse. Because of the store closures and decrease in sales, Forbes claims “western fashion brands have cancelled over $2.8 (£2.26) billion in orders from Bangladeshi suppliers, potentially sparking a humanitarian crisis. At least 1.2 million workers in Bangladesh are said to have been directly impacted by order cancellations, and of the thousands of factories and suppliers who have lost their contracts: ‘72.4% said they were unable to provide their workers with some income when furloughed, and 80.4% said they were unable to provide severance pay when order cancellations resulted in worker dismissals’”. It is a disaster, whether for the companies or the workers. A serious question is that without the salary, how can the poor survive? Some brands had no choice but fired their employees, while Hermes will be “paying its 15,500 employees their regular salary without need for government intervention.” For example, Chanel started to use its supply chains to produce face masks for hospital workers in France. “The fashion house announced that it is currently working on prototypes, which will then need to be signed off by the French authorities before being produced in its factories”. Louis Vuitton also “reopened 12 of its 16 leather goods production sites in France in order to produce face masks, which will be donated to frontline healthcare workers”. Hermes is also donating €20 million to Paris’ public hospitals, along with the 30 tons of hand sanitizer and 31,000 masks produced in its factories. “LVMH, the parent company behind Dior, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton, has transformed all production facilities that were responsible for making make-up, beauty products and fragrance into producing much-needed hand sanitiser, which will then be donated free of charge to French hospitals”. Even the retailers are doing what they are capable of doing to help people to fight the COVID-19. “Second hand designer retailer Vestiaire Collective hosted a community charity sale with items donated by the likes of Kate Moss, Rachel Weisz, Clare Waight Keller and Pernille Teisbaek. All proceeds from the sale, including 100 percent of Vestiaire Collective’s commission, will be donated to a number of charities working to fight the Covid-19 virus. These include: The World Health Organisation, the Italian Lombardia Region Fundraising, the France/Paris Hospitals Foundation and Madrid’s La Paz Hospital”. The Della Valle family, who own Tod’s, will also “set aside €5 million for the family members of healthcare workers who lost their lives fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The fund, called “Sempre con Voi”, will be managed by the Protezione Civile”. These brands did not back up under the emergency situation. Instead, they stepped up to help. At this moment, they are not just brands that sell luxury, but brands that save lives.
Although the existence of COVID-19 is threatening the fashion and luxury industry, Matthew Drinkwater, Head of Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA), believes that “this is an opportunity to redefine business models and build a more sustainable, progressive future” for the fashion industry. As the technology is getting more and more advanced, it is necessary for the brands to start considering moving the business online. The Fabricant, a fashion house that only produces digital clothing, is a great example of the new business models. “In their latest work for outdoor lifestyle brand Napapijri, The Fabricant created digital clothing samples in place of physical ones, eliminating textile waste and creating stunning online content in the process”. The founder of The Fabricant, Kerry Murphy, believes that consumers’ reaction to the impact of COVID-19 on the fashion and luxury industry is that their behavioural change will depend on new experiences. Moreover, Selfridges’s recent digital fashion campaign “explores the future of fashion and retail through the medium of digital art by 3D digital fashion designer Cat Taylor, who transformed the new season’s collections into otherworldly digital renders, which linked to the Selfridges eCommerce site”. However, technology is still a challenge for virtual fashion.
The fashion and luxury retailers sell products and make money through having the customers try their products physically in the department store. People will buy the products only if they look good on them, but because of COVID-19, people are not able to go to the department stores anymore. This means that the customers are not able to physically experience the products, so they are probably not going to buy the products. This is a huge problem for the fashion and luxury retailers. Many retailers are having excess inventory and giving out large discounts in order to sell them. They even start selling products online which are normally exclusive in stores. However, as everyone is staying at home at this time, the possibility of people going online for entertainment is much higher. There is opportunity waiting for the fashion and luxury industry: to cooperate with internet celebrities and sell its products online. Just like how the makeup companies send samples to the youtubers and have them show their followers the effects of the makeups, brands and retailers can hire internet celebrities to do some try-ons in order to promote their products. When it comes to e-commerce, the Chinese small merchandisers have been doing the virtual try-ons for a long time. Normally, the shop owners will have a direct broadcasting room and the customers can just click the link on the website to enter. The shop owners will try stacks of clothes on themselves to let the customers see the effect. If the customer likes one product, he can just move his finger, put it in his shopping cart and keep shopping. The fashion and luxury retailers can use this method to show their customers the effect of their product easily. This will help the customers to make decisions on whether or not to buy the product. The great side of this is that instead of holding a grant fashion show, hiring famous singers and rappers, and inviting all the celebrities and press to attend, the brands can save all these money for the other activities. Nevertheless, customers’ feedback shows that the size of the clothes can still be tricky, because normal people’s bodies cannot be compared to the models’ bodies. One solution to that is to have all sizes of models to do the virtual try-ons in order to better show the effects.
Even though the situation for the french fashion and luxury industry is bad for now, there is still a bright future waiting for it. This does not only apply to the french fashion and luxury industry, but also every other industry and even every country. We will overcome COVID-19.
Trip to Fashion 