Omicron variant sees French fashion trade shows postponed

The fifth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and the great concern caused by the speed at which the Omicron variant is being transmitted across Europe have called into question several fashion events scheduled for the beginning of 2022. This Tuesday saw big names in Italian fashion announce the cancellation of runway shows and events for Milan Fashion Week and the Pitti Uomo trade show and now it is the turn of one of Paris’ major fashion events to review its plans.

Trade show Salon International de la Lingerie (international lingerie trade show) and its upstream counterpart Interfilière Paris have postponed their joint edition scheduled to run from January 22 to 24 at the city’s Porte de Versailles in Hall 7.3. In the same way that trade show Maison&Objet had to forfeit its edition from between Christmas to New Year’s Day, the inability of exhibitors and international visitors to travel to Paris forced the organiser Eurovet to review its plans.

Over two thirds of the 200 exhibitors expected at SIL and around 100 at Interfilière were to travel in from abroad. Faced with various travel restrictions in different countries in order to counter the spread of Covid-19, these exhibitors and international visitors, which make up 65% of all visitors, were reviewing their plans to attend.

“We called our exhibitors and they told us about their constraints,” said Eurovet’s lingerie and swim division director Taya de Reyniès. “People from countries including the UK cannot come and the UK represents our third or fourth top country for visitors. Asian exhibitors also relied on [representatives from] their British office to attend and this is no longer possible. The show’s selling point is its international appeal. This is what our exhibitors expect and we have had too low a registration level to be able to draw visitors to this edition.”

Rather than offering a smaller-scale event and not meeting the promise of creating an international platform for the sector, Eurovet’s management opted for postponement.

The two trade shows will now be held from June 18 to 20 in Paris’ Porte de Versailles’ in Hall 7.2 and will bring together global players in lingerie and loungewear as well as beach and activewear businesses. The date chosen should enable the majority of participating brands to present the main part of their Spring 2023 collections.

In order to keep in touch with brands and buyers until June, SIL and Interfilière will offer online conferences to present the various trends of the season which visitors could have discovered in the month of January. This also represents another way to highlight the diversity of the trade shows’ offerings.

Omicron variant sees French fashion trade shows postponed

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