FIDM Museum & Galleries Curator Kevin Jones Quoted in WWD

WWD West Coast Executive Editor Booth Moore interviewed fashion historian Kevin Jones, curator of FIDM Museum & Galleries, last week about fashions of the Spanish flu pandemic as eerie predictions for today’s COVID-19 pandemic.

Similar to what’s happening now, during the Spanish flu pandemic health officials encouraged people to wear face masks in public. Stores shut their doors, limited hours and crowd capacity, and discouraged exchanges and returns in order to limit transmission.

“Through the fall of 1918, sales of blankets, comforters and winter underwear (a precursor to today’s stay-at-home athleisure?) were up,” writes WWD, “while sales of ready-to-wear and children’s wear were hard hit. Meanwhile, sales of ‘flu veils’ surged, presaging today’s trend of PPE-inspired accessories.” 

“It had been fashionable to wear veils during the Victorian period and the Edwardian era. The very large hats were often secured to the head with veils. But they had gone out when the bigger hats started to shrink down and particularly during WWI,” Kevin Jones told WWD. 

“The generation that lived through the Spanish flu had come out of veiling,” Kevin added, “but picked it up again...it became a perfect excuse to also be able to cover your face.”