The masks. An essen­tial accessory.

If the mask was still per­ceived as an incon­gru­ous object a few weeks ago, it will become a part of our inti­ma­cy for quite some time. It would there­fore be inter­est­ing to con­sid­er it as a use­ful and full-fledged acces­so­ry to our dress­ing rooms. Today con­sid­ered as a health and social guide­line, it is expect­ed that the con­sumer in need of aes­thet­ic pros­per­i­ty will use the mask as a kind of per­son­al expres­sion in his or her sar­to­r­i­al choice of the day.

Frankly speak­ing, we first had a dou­ble feel­ing about it. The rapid­ly grow­ing demand has been large­ly con­firmed today how­ev­er it is still weird to triv­i­al­ize these mask as a trend, giv­en peo­ple are wear­ing them in order to slow down a glob­al pan­dem­ic.
Of course, there was Marine Serre’s antipol­lu­tion face masks from her Marée Noire show (2019). As a cyclist and sen­si­tive to envi­ron­men­tal issues, she began offer­ing these masks with quite a suc­cess. Vanes­sa Fried­man, fash­ion direc­tor of the NY Times is also refer­ring to Serre in an arti­cle mid-March giv­ing a brief his­to­ry of masks. And as she con­cludes ​“Per­haps we will reach the point where wear­ing a mask will be seen, as it is in Asia, as a sign of care and a ges­ture of com­mu­ni­ty.”

In a sec­ond arti­cle Fried­man was won­der­ing if masks should be a fash­ion state­ment. And we do agree with her: ​“When masks migrate into the realm of fash­ion, how­ev­er, they become some­thing else. As with all acces­sories (as with shoes, bags and scarves), they become sym­bols of not just health or social con­cern, but of iden­ti­ty.”

Europe is a nest of high­ly tal­ent­ed design­ers and seam­stress. They are the ones who vol­un­tar­i­ly sewed masks for hos­pi­tals and med­ical cen­tres. They did this for free, and at that time, no-one would have dared to think in com­mer­cial terms.

Today, beyond social care and iden­ti­ty sym­bol, we tru­ly believe it is a way to give a voice to local design­ers, to under­stand the val­ue and the qual­i­ty of local cre­ation and cer­tain­ly local pro­duc­tion, and to raise aware­ness of the val­ue of this know-how. The nom­i­na­tion as new fash­ion state­ment is a com­plete under­state­ment, it will be an indis­pens­able acces­so­ry in every wardrobe.

It is why we proud­ly share the work of our Unit­ed Fash­ion design­ers and seam­stress.
And please feel free to share oth­er links and con­tacts to info@​unitedfashion.​eu

• Giuseppe Vir­gone
• Con­ni Kaminski
• Oh Suzy
• Schmidt­taka­hashi
• Duarte
• One Wolf
• Edie Grim
• Le Colonel Moutarde 
• Daw­id Tomaszewski

• MLS Stu­dio
• Dori­ane van Overeem
• Ninii
• Julie Meurisse

• Four Threads
• Näz
• Lila Style House

Pho­to: Giuseppe Virgonne