Custom made fashion OUT NOW

Our Guest : Émeline Brulé

April 2020 in San Francisco, waiting in line to enter Rainbow Grocery, a worker-owned cooperative focusing on local, vegetarian organic food. Every journey is an opportunity to discover the new signs accompanying the pandemic. On the ground, painted signs to enforce physical distanciation – one can see the traces of two previous attempts. They have replaced the stencil graffitis “Queers Hate Techies” and “Queers Hate YIMBYs” from a few weeks ago. All around are new mobile signage informing customers about the store’s rules – ‘for Instacart, please wait on the other side’. ‘Instacart workers? Please consult the store’s floorplan’. The street transformer now sports an ad for custom, fashionable and locally-made masks and an anti-TrumpPence sticker. They’ve replaced the concert posters and the lost pets flyers. They can capitalise on the time spent waiting, moving eight feet at a time. They illustrate how this crisis can also be perceived as an opportunity, both economic and politic.