Et was 5 a.m., she was on her way to Milan Fashion Week, when the message about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine popped up on Veronika Heilbrunner’s cell phone screen.
“I thought about staying at home. After all, it was the worst possible time to fly to a fashion week. ”The influencer then decided to participate, after all it was the first fashion week after two years of the pandemic.
On social media such as Instagram, followers of models and influencers can follow the glitz and glamor of the current fashion weeks in Milan and Paris. Here’s an ad for a cosmetics brand, there’s a picture in a chic Prada dress.
outrage at posts
Meanwhile, the models share posts of children sleeping in bunkers in Ukraine. Or people on the run. Or fundraisers. After all, war is raging around 2,000 kilometers from the Paris fashion world. Several hundred thousand euros in donations have already been collected in this way.
But some users are outraged by the posts of chic fashion. How can you even think of fashion in the current situation, asks a user in the comments under a picture of the model Leonie Hanne.
“Of course clothes are banal when cities are being bombed elsewhere. On the other hand, fashion is my job. I work freelance and if I don’t do my duties, first of all I’ve lost the money. And secondly, I also risk more jobs because unreliable people are no longer booked,” says Veronika Heilbrunner.
“Partys don’t have to be”
The 40-year-old is currently very careful about which pictures she posts and which events she attends. For example, her last picture on Instagram shows blue and yellow tulips, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. “And I think boisterous parties are wrong at the moment, they don’t have to be.”
The pictures of some models from the fashion week may be provocative. They stir up a question that many are probably asking themselves: How much normality is allowed in abnormal times? And how much escapism can it be?
“Even in real life, you don’t mourn all the time in difficult situations,” says Heilbrunner. “And if it’s only for an hour, you often try to dream up another world and flee there.” And social media is always a dream world.