Fashion

Luxury Designers Are Now Manufacturing Hand Sanitizer

Claire Miles

Mar 19, 2020

The coronavirus global outbreak has undoubtedly changed the world. Now, the fashion industry has responded. Louis Vuitton and Dior are now making hand sanitizer instead of luxury fragrances. The French fashion houses will give the sanitizers to French health authorities and the Assistance Publique-Hospitauz de Paris for free to supply 39 hospitals. France has more than 5,000 cases of the coronavirus. The company decided to make “substantial quantities” of the sanitizer at its manufacturing centers “given the risk of a shortage” in France. “LVMH intends to help address the risk of a lack of product in France and enable a greater number of people to continue to take the right action to protect themselves from the spread of the virus,” read a press release.

LVMH chairman and chief executive Bernard Arnault pledged to produce and deliver hand sanitizer to French health authorities and hospitals free of charge. The Financial Times reports that for one, LVMH already had a bunch of purified water, ethanol, and glycerine on deck, the three main ingredients needed to make hand sanitizer.

Other big names in the industry are stepping up, as well. Donatella Versace and her daughter Allegra donated more than $222,000 to Milan’s San Raffaele hospital to fight the coronavirus. “In times like this, it is important to be united and support however we can to help all those who are in the front lines, fighting every day to save hundreds of lives,” the designer wrote on Instagram. Prada’s co-CEOs Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada announced they have donated two intensive care and resuscitation units each to Milan hospitals.