PPE is now officially capital-F Fashion

Naomi Campbell stepped onto a flight from LA to New York in head-to-toe personal protective equipment in March, as the spread of covid-19 was intensifying. It felt like a novel Instagrammable moment at the time rather than a foreshadowing. A legend, an icon, a woman whose very image is her livelihood, sporting a hazmat suit, face shield, goggles, mask, and gloves. But that outfit would soon become the uniform of beleaguered frontline healthcare workers worldwide if they were lucky enough not to face staggering PPE shortages.

The UK and US have begun their rollout of the covid-19 vaccine this week, as death tolls continue to mount globally. But it seems fashion is ready to crystallize this PPE moment into a piece of easily-digestible culture. On Monday, Campbell announced she was donating the famously depicted hazmat suit to the Bath Fashion Museum.

The supermodel claims that she buys her hazmat suits in bulk. Given that she's a famously careful flyer, it almost certainly cannot be the same suit from the picture. What sort of millionaire germaphobe supermodel would keep such a disposable object lying around for months? In any case, it probably wasn't very effective in protecting her from anything. Proper utilization of personal protective equipment requires training and know-how. Dr. Ashish K. Jha says, "there is a specific protocol you have to follow, or you end up actually infecting yourself."

So it's not the exact suit in the photo that's museum-worthy, but the iconography of one of the world's most untouchable women kneeling in the face of covid; the idea of the pandemic as a great leveler.

Initially, the idea seemed a bit insensitive -- a fashion museum of all things acquiring a supermodel's used hazmat suit. It seemed like a horrible trivialization of an image that reminds so many of loss and grief. But that's essentially that's what fashion is. We look at a garment, and we are reminded of the exact place in time where it was visible and vital. An outstanding representation of a moment in time that no one will forget.

Since March, we've seen countless pictures of worn frontline workers in their PPE, exhaustedly persevering amidst unparalleled loss and chaos. All we see is their eyes, full of fatigue and fear. Many healthcare workers took to wearing smiling photos of themselves to comfort patients and restore some echo of normalcy, whatever that is.

Naomi Campbell opted for a sort of pouty smize in her hazmat selfie. As she exited the plane, paparazzi caught her with a Burberry cape thrown over the Tyvek suit. For her, the PPE gave her permission to continue her life with little disruption. There she was, dazzling the masses with her safety precautions! But for so many others, though, it became a previously unimaginable part of daily life, something you wear to survive.

It is hard to draw an exact parallel to another outfit or garment in history that was so symbolic as the hazmat suit, gloves, goggles, mask, and face shield. What other ensembles can draw upon such a vast register of human emotions? When was the last time something of cultural significance happened that affected or threatened our physical beings the way covid has? The hazmat suit is the fashion of a physical barrier between us and disease, tragedy, loss, death. Personal protection laid bare. Maybe the closest comparison could be to a military uniform, specific attire that can evoke so much emotion with its mere presence.

While Naomi Campbell's specific depiction of PPE may rub some the wrong way now, its appearance in a fashion museum shouldn't really surprise anyone. Fashion's very existence rests on the concept of glamorizing and commemorating the mundane and necessary.