The fashion industry in India has started to feel the effects of the spread of COVID-19 with fashion designers Manish Malhotra and Tarun Tahiliani taking to Instagram to announce that they are shutting operations. Also putting their work on hold are designers Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, and Rohit Bal.
Sabyasachi, whose much-anticipated collaboration with H&M expected to be unveiled in April, has also postponed the launch due to the pandemic. “Today, in the middle of a season, we are shutting down every single one of our factories, and sending all our staff home on paid leave. We will pay our employees for as long as we can, regardless of their ability to work from home,” he said in his Instagram post announcing the shutdown of operations.
On Friday, Manish Malhotra issued a statement, which read, “Understanding our priority to ensure the health of our employees, clients and our nation, we are temporarily discontinuing our operations from 20th March, 5 pm onwards until further notice.”
Urging people to ‘stay safe, recharge, and keep dreaming for the day not so far, when we all will resume our lives with as little damage as possible,’ Tarun Tahiliani’s statement said: “Our factory has been closed for the past few days and it will remain so till March 31 so our employees and artisans can stay safe at home.” It added, “From March 20, we have also decided to close our stores across all cities until further notice.”