What we learnt in the last week and how readers, editors and industry stakeholders feel about fashion media’s content during national tragedies

Last week became a learning curve for us at The Voice of Fashion. A brief internal debate—should we continue with our stories, business as usual, even as the country deals with bereavement and tragedy after the crash of Air India Flight 171 near Ahmedabad? Or recalibrate towards appropriate and respectful content?

After we ruled out beauty tricks, product listings, and trend stories, we posted a video on our Instagram, asking viewers how fashion media should respond. Almost everyone who responded brought pertinent arguments. They were invested in the issue—no view was carelessly flung, no remark sarcastic. 

The fact is, there is no ready, go-to plan during national emergencies for fashion media. 

“Pause” was almost unequivocally suggested. Some proposed reflective pieces; others voted for silence for a while. It was clear that product and trend-related content at a time like this was inessential. Even though there were some views that argued for business as usual, just as the fashion industry, its workers and its “work”— goes on. 

The last time we internally discussed the reshaping of content in sync with a calamity was during the pandemic. Especially in 2020, when making sense of the fashion industry’s efforts to survive, find optimism and continuity in design, cultural values and creativity required pivoting from time-tested formulas of fashion reportage. That was a long-drawn rehaul, prompted by a global crisis that affected production, consumption, and personal meaning in fashion.

TVOF launched The Doodle Map contest followed by a digital exhibition of artworks—artistic impressions of fashion in quarantine—from the physical to the psychological and the digital. We got dozens of entries. It was followed by  a special issue, Saving Value—A Rebuilding Report on Fashion, Crafts, Retail and Sustainability. ‘A Peace of Hope’ became our year end theme for 2023, when Ukraine and Russia went to war; and then we wrote about the conflict and trauma of the Press Jacket in the context of the Israel-Gaza conflict. 

The fact is, there is no ready, go-to plan during national emergencies for fashion media. Unlike news publications and television channels who have their work cut out—scientific and forensic investigations, records of what political leaders say and do, international treaties in cases of terrorism, reporting on survivor families, anecdotes from lives lost and found, insurances and compensations, reporting on medical and psychological traumas. 

There’s no formula for such moments—each national tragedy arrives with its own emotional terrain, its own peculiar quagmire. The terrorism attack in Pahalgam this April and the Air India crash of last week—require finely tuned difference, even if broad sentiments are similar. 

There is precedence that fashion pivots at times like these. It protests on red carpets, forms rings of solidarity against oppression and sexual harassment, boycotts offensive spaces, stands for worker rights and has enlisted itself among the agents for climate change. 

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001, Vogue US postponed its events and light-hearted features. The October 2001 issue opened with an essay by editor-in-chief Anna Wintour acknowledging the tragedy. The Spring/Summer 2002 New York fashion week was disrupted mid-schedule; shows were cancelled or toned down significantly. Fashion publications across the world paused trend pieces and focused on memorialising firefighters, first responders, and stories of survival. Vanity Fair published a now-iconic photo feature titled “The Faces of Ground Zero”.

In the context of 26/11 terrorist attacks in India in 2008, while some fashion glossies stayed silent or out of step, others delayed celebratory issues. Verve and Marie Claire India (I worked at the latter as editor then) carried socially-sensitive content post-attack, but mainstream Bollywood-heavy content in most cases was resumed quickly. Lifestyle supplements of dailies like Hindustan Times, The Times of India carried citizen voices paying tributes to martyrs and soldiers. But most everyone in fashion media returned to celebrity content and advertorials—there was no cohesive editorial stance across lifestyle media. 

In contrast, Covid-19 tugged in sombre solidarity. Vogue Italia’s April 2020 white cover will go down as “iconic”. The international editions of GQ, Elle, and others featured healthcare workers on covers. There was a discernible shift from “what’s in” to “what matters”. A return to cultural belongingness was seeded in that time. 

Let’s find then a point of tenderness at a time like this? To find some answers through a gentle debate, we invited editors of other fashion magazines, voices respected in the industry, some designers and brand heads to share their views. 

Starting today, we aim to build a small series of voices—”National Tragedies & Lifestyle Media”. As it rolls out, we will include vox pops and excerpts from readers and citizens that are in our inboxes.