A rather special auction is organised in France: more than fifty famous brands from the fashion industry, from Chanel over Karl Lagerfeld to Dries Van Noten, are selling garments or accessories to buy medical equipment for hospitals.
A designer piece for healthcare
The initiative #ProtegeTonSoignant (Protect your carer) has set up a multidisciplinary team, whose mission is to help healthcare providers obtain medical equipment during the coronavirus crisis. The collective will launch an online auction on 1 May, in which a large number of internationally renowned fashion houses will participate. The auction will last till 4 May.
Important players in the industry, such as Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Paco Rabanne, are each donating a piece from their collection to be auctioned. This piece will have to be blue, the colour of the organising collective. The starting price is 100 euros. Some pieces, that have been made especially for this sale, will be auctioned on a separate platform.
20 million needed
All profits will be donated to #ProtegeTonSoignant, which will use these funds to purchase protective medical equipment such as mouth masks and hand sanitiser. “The accumulated donations are still insufficient in view of the requests that we continue to receive from hospitals every day: we now have more than 20 million euros of requests for medical and non-medical equipment on hold”, the collective explains on the website dedicated to this auction.
This “fashion commitment”, which young designers as well as major fashion houses commit to, is also supported by the French Federation of Haute Couture and Fashion, as well as by the French Fashion Institute. As a symbol of French culture, the world of fashion rises up to its responsibilities, they say.
