As Gap prepares to re-open up to 800 of our Old Navy, Athleta, Gap, Banana Republic, Janie and Jack, Intermix stores before end of month, the brand is implementing enhanced safety measures to become a trusted place for customers.

Gap is working with local government, led by health official guidelines, and in partnership with RILA and industry peers, to open its stores when and where it is safe to do so.

In addition to 1,000 Ship from Store locations, the brand is providing Curbside Pickup in 75 locations to provide its customers a comfortable and seamless customer experience and plans to expand both programs in the coming months.

It is also implementing rigorous cleaning routines throughout each store and providing hand sanitiser stations at its front doors and cash wraps and temporarily closing fitting rooms.

Besides, the brand supplies all team members with high-quality, reusable face masks to wear during their shifts and encouraging customers to wear a face covering while shopping, has installed plexiglass health guard partitions in front of registers and for mobile payments, posting signage throughout the store encouraging customers to observe social distancing guidelines, is opening with reduced hours and actively monitoring the flow of customers in stores, temporarily closing restrooms and quarantining returns for 24 hours before putting them back on the salesfloor and ensuring teams follow healthy hygiene habits such as frequent hand washing/sanitising and monitor for COVID-19 symptoms before heading to work with a provided health checklist.

Giorgio Armani recently revealed the schedule for its next runway shows. According to it, the shows will take place in September, apart from the house's next Haute Couture show, which has been pushed back to January 2021.

While the fashion world 100 per cent digital runway shows, with London, Milan and Paris all having announced online fashion weeks for June and July, some of the larger brands are revealing their own catwalk calendars. Such is the case of Giorgio Armani, which has presented the dates of its next men's and womenswear Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani shows, as well as that of its next Armani Privé collection.

The latest Giorgio Armani and Emporio Armani men's and womenswear collections will be shown in Milan in September. At the present time, the company is still working out the most appropriate format for these ready-to-wear shows. The Armani Privé Haute Couture collection will receive a different treatment, with a show scheduled for January 2021. The event will be organised in Milan, more specifically at the Palazzo Orsini. The show will present a timeless collection, made up of both winter garments and lighter designs intended for the summer.

According to a new study by the Bain Consultancy, the global luxury goods sector is likely to collapse by 35 per cent this year due to coronavirus lockdowns, It would take two to three years to return to 2019 global sales of around $303 billion -- with the forecast decline much steeper than the single-digit drop recorded after the 2008-9 crisis.

The coronavirus crisis is expected to lead to a spate of mergers and acquisitions of weakened brands, the closure of single-brand stores and reshaping of already suffering U.S. department stores. Customers are also likely to emerge from global lockdowns with a new set of priorities.

The semi-annual study for the Italian luxury goods producers' group Altagamma foresees the most dramatic drop in sales during the second quarter, when they are forecast to slide up to 50 per cent, followed by a milder contraction in the second half. The study does not forecast the impact of another round of lockdowns, should the virus peak again.

For the full-year, Bain forecasts luxury sales of apparel, handbags, footwear, watches and beauty products of €189 billion to € 220 billion. The degree of the year-end hit will depend on whether there are rebounds in the local markets -- something already being seen in China and Asia -- and to what extent domestic and regional tourism is able to resume.

According to Fibre2Fashion's market analysis tool TexPro, the global trade of synthetic staple fibers, not carded, combed or otherwise processes for spinning of aramids is anticipated to rise to $1,843.30 million in 2022 with a rate of 63.65 per cent from 2019.

The global export of synthetic staple fibers of Aramids was $391.19 million in 2017, which grew 31.56 per cent to $514.67 million in 2019. Total exports reduced 9.64 per cent in 2019 over the previous year and is expected to move up to $776.67 million in 2022 with a rate of 50.91 per cent from 2019.

The global import value of synthetic staple fibers of Aramids was $422.25 million in 2017, which increased 44.87 per cent to $611.71 million in 2019. Total imports decreased 3.73 per cent in 2019 over the previous year and is expected to rise to $1,066.63 million in 2022 with a rate of 74.37 per cent from 2019.

Belgium, US, Germany and China were the key exporters of synthetic staple fibers of Aramids across the globe in 2019, together comprising 55.88 per cent of total export. These were followed by Slovakia, Turkey and Italy.

Zara-owner Inditex will reopen some of its smaller stores in Spain, as part of a gradual reopening of the store network in its home market where shops have been shuttered for more than seven weeks.

Spain accounts for the fashion retailer's largest network of stores by far, and the country accounts for nearly 16 percent of group sales. Inditex has a stable of eight brands from Massimo Dutti to Pull & Bear, including the Zara Home homeware label.

Spain imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe on March 14 as it sought to control one of the worst outbreaks of the coronavirus globally, killing more than 25,000.

The government has started to relax the terms of the lockdown, allowing small businesses like hairdressers and shops to open this week, with restrictions

According to the latest data by CCF Group Tracker, Japanese textile and apparel imports in March declined by 2 per cent year-on-year in March to 216,500 tonne. Of these, imports from China declined by 4 per cent to 105,300 tonne. In the first quarter, Japanese textile and apparel imports totaled 605,000 tonne, down by 7.5 per cent year-on-year; the volume from China totaled 286,000 tonne, declining by 13.1 per cent year-on-year.

Japanese textile and apparel import demand weakened sharply in the first quarter of 2020, and the decline in the volume from China was larger than the total. Global textile and apparel industry has been greatly impacted hit by the accelerating outbreak. While the pandemic in China has been controlled and mills gradually returned to work, the global consumption and trade suffered comparatively in the epidemic spread outside China.

From the perspective of share, the proportion of China in Japanese textile and apparel import market has gradually declined in recent years, with the proportion of quantity falling to 47.2 per cent.The market shares of Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh have gradually increased, especially in Southeast Asia.

Kingpins, the denim sourcing show with highly-edited selection of vendors, has announced that the next edition go Kingpins 24 will be an online-only denim event which will target the US denim market. To be held on June on 23-24, 2020. In 2020, Kingpins launched Kingpins24, the first online-only denim supply chain event, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The online event will build upon the success and momentum of the first Kingpins24 event, which drew nearly 10,000 visitors to its website during its April 22/23 run and saw nearly 29,000 views of its on-demand content, including more than 13,000 views during the show and in the week following.

One key change that will be made to the June Kingpins24 event will be that members of the denim supply chain that are not Kingpins New York exhibitors will be allowed to apply to join the online event as exhibitors.

The updated Kingpins24 concept will also include a shorter and more streamlined livestream, with a focus on webinars, interviews, panels and conversations. The livestream, which will be abbreviated to 8 hours from 10, will go live at 9am EDT and wrap up at 5pm EDT on both days. The livestream will once again be hosted by Olah and Vivian Wang, Kingpins’ managing director and head of global sales, but will include a larger cast of co-hosts and interviewers, according to a press release by Kingpins.

On-demand content will return with a wide variety of content produced by Kingpins, Kingpins exhibitors and industry partners. Feedback from Kingpins24 attendees put an emphasis on product-related information from mills and manufacturers, and this category will be a focus of the next iteration of Kingpins24.

Finally, Kingpins Trend x Denim Dudes will once again screen the FW 2021 denim trend forecast film during Kingpins24 for a $35 fee per viewer. Now, it will be screened multiple times on June 25, 2020, the day after Kingpins24 wraps. As before, all other Kingpins24 content remains entirely free.

The February year-to-date revenue of Kontoor Brands declined by mid-single digits compared to adjusted results in the prior year, with approximately one-third of the drop-off due to China, as impacts from COVID-19 weighed heavily in the region.

The brand’s March revenue declined significantly, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, as retail and owned-door closures and governmental stay-at-home orders spread. Given that the wholesale channel represented approximately 85 percent of the company’s global revenue in 2019, continued customer door closures resulted in a material decline for April revenue, but digital trends have been improving in recent weeks.

In the US, the company’s largest online and brick-and-mortar retail partners are leaders in their respective channels of distribution, and while volumes have been reduced, sales to most of the company’s largest customers are continuing.

So far, Kontoor has not experienced significant service disruptions to customers given its global, diversified supply chain network. As order volumes decelerated late in the first quarter, production in the company’s owned manufacturing facilities was adjusted to align with demand and tightly manage inventory.

Kontoor finished the first quarter with $479 million in cash and cash equivalents, and approximately $1.4 billion in total long-term debt. Over the past 60 days, the company has taken several proactive actions to enhance liquidity, including drawing down $475 million from its revolving credit facility and amending the terms of its credit facility to provide future period covenant relief and increased flexibility, but requiring netted cash not to exceed $250 million.

The Spanish fashion retailer Mango will donate 1 per cent of its in-store sales revenue to WHO’s solidarity fund that has been set up to help the most vulnerable health groups in the world.

With more of the brand’s opening in various countries and cities, stores located in New York, Russia, Turkey and Europe will partake in the initiative.

The COVID-19 solidarity fund has been created to allow foundations, organisations or even individuals to help the WHO respond, prevent and detect the disease in different parts of the world.

Apart from the current donation, the brand has also provided 2 million face masks to medical workers along with making their distribution, logistics and production facilities available to the disposal of Spanish authorities for the manufacturing of surgical masks.

As more and more countries relax lockdowns and social distancing norms, Mango was able to open up some stores in Europe in April. Their website has been functional throughout to take orders.

Planned from May 14-18, 2020, Monte-Carlo Fashion Week will move to social media for launching its project 2020 MCFW Series. Federica Nardoni Spinetta, President of the CMM and creator of Monte-Carlo Fashion Week (MCFW), has scheduled a series of live streams to bring together key players of the event to offer an alternative way to celebrate fashion.

The event will be held on the CMM’s Instagram account @montecarlofashionweek on the weekend when the eighth edition would have taken place, replacing roughly 45 runway shows which would have taken place. Speakers at the event will discuss cultural and style-related themes, an exploration of the present and future state of the fashion industry. Participants will continue to highlight the importance of sustainability, ethics and eco-awareness.

The live stream sessions will begin with Pauline Ducruet, founder of the ready-to-wear unisex brand Alter. One of the highlights of the fashion week will be its awards night, which celebrates brands’ and designers’ commitment to the industry and sustainability. Adapted for the digital format, the award will go to the brand who has best distinguished itself in the online meetings and talks. The winner will display their vision and work in a short video which will be uploaded to the fashion week’s social media accounts and the YouTube account Fashion Channel. With 1.6 million subscribers, it proposes a true growth opportunity for the winning brand.