Arab Fashion Week: June's runway event will be hosted online

The move signals a larger trend in the industry across the world

Arab Fashion Week has announced it is going digital. Courtesy Arab Fashion Week

Arab Fashion Week has announced that it's next event, scheduled to run in Dubai from Wednesday to Friday, June 24 to 26, will now take place entirely online.

What is normally a series of runway events held in front of a live audience will instead be hosted digitally and re-imagined in response to the ongoing concerns around Covid-19.

The new format is in line with “precautionary measures the local authorities have implemented recently to avoid crowd gathering and to ensure the safety of the members, partners, and the fashion community”, organisers said in a statement.

The change is so far only limited to the June event, with no word yet on whether this signals a longer term shift for the AFW.

By shifting to online, the AFW is part of a growing movement within the fashion industry that is seeing it move away from the long-standing runway format.

Shanghai Fashion Week was the first to go digital only, as it was forced to reinvent itself at the very height of the pandemic.

Since then, London Fashion Week has announced that its autumn shows will be both genderless and digital, while Saint Laurent and Gucci have both opted to leave the respective calendars of Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks, marking a seismic rethinking of the industry as a whole.

Arab Fashion Week shows and talks will now be available to view through its website and social media platforms.

More information is at www.arabfashionweek.org