European luxury labels are now using their posh fashion factories for coronavirus relief.
The Armani group announced today that all of its Italian production plants have switched to manufacturing single-use medical overalls, in an effort to protect health care workers in Milan, Rome and the Tuscany region.
Rome-based label Bulgari — which resides under the LVMH umbrella and is typically known for its jewelry, watches, fragrances and leather goods — is now cranking out hand sanitizer. The high-end brand just pledged to make hundreds of thousands of recyclable bottles of hand-sanitizing gel, to be distributed to medical facilities in Italy.
LVMH earlier announced plans to address the medical face-mask shortage in France. “By virtue of its global distribution network, LVMH has managed to secure an order with a Chinese industrial supplier for a delivery of 10 million masks in France,” the conglomerate said in a release last week.
That mask order will be repeated each week for the next month, in the hopes of providing 40 million masks to French health authorities.
Gucci, meanwhile, is donating more than $2 million to the cause, which will be allocated between the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund and the Italian Civil Protection Department. The Italian label is also using its social media platform to encourage followers to make donations in a campaign called “We Are All In This Together.”
And Prada’s factory in Perugia, Italy, has already begun to produce 80,000 medical overalls and 110,000 masks — personal protective equipment (PPE) that will be delivered to health care workers in the coming days.
These luxury labels join fashion brands H&M, Gap Inc. and Canada Goose, who’ve also pledged to manufacture PPE to help medical workers battling coronavirus.