A fashion panel at the Oxford Union has been postponed by Gucci due to travel lockdown in Milan resulting from the coronavirus outbreak.
The panel was due to take place on February 26th and included the CEO of Gucci as one of its speakers.
However, the University stresses that the “cancellation of one event does not make a trend.”
Furthermore, appropriate guidelines, in accordance with advice provided by Public Health England, have been circulated to individual departments and colleges.
Two members of the Gucci panel have recently attended Milan Fashion Week, which was affected by the measures introduced by the Italian government.
Marco Bizzarri, President and CEO of Gucci, and Sinéad Burke, an activist and one of the 15 women to appear on the Duchess of Sussex’s British Vogue cover in September, both attended fashion shows before the restrictions were imposed.
A ban on public events in Northern Italy was introduced after the outbreak. This caused fashion houses, such as Armani, to close their Autumn Winter 2020 shows to the public and opting to livestream them instead.
Eleven towns across Lombardy and Veneto have been placed under quarantine after the coronavirus outbreak emerged on Friday 21st.
As of February 25th, there have been 229 confirmed cases and eleven deaths in the region making it the worst outbreak in Europe and the third worst outbreak globally.
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has advised travellers returning from Northern Italy to self-isolate if they display flu-like symptoms, and to self-isolate regardless if they are returning from quarantined areas.
The Union promised the event would be a discussion of “the importance of inclusivity in fashion and beyond” with “some of the industry’s most influential figures.”
Bizzarri said that “creativity is a consequence of diversity,” and is credited with increasing Gucci’s global outlook.
The other speakers planned for the event were Dapper Dan, an American fashion designer from Harlem and long-time Gucci collaborator. Hari Nef, an actress, model and writer, was also meant to speka, Nef was the first openly transgender person to appear on the cover of a major British magazine.
