After late February (and a very watered down Fashion Week) in 2020, New York Fashion (and fashion houses across the globe) started to feel and see a very scary paradigm shift in the fashion industry.  Chinese luxury buyers started to spend less, luxury and retail stores began to see less foot traffic, and income and profits went from a crawl to a stand still. All in the wake of Covid-19! With major retail brands cancelling (not paying for garment orders) orders for Spring/Summer 2020 and leaving factory worker without pay (and warehouses filled with orders that they can’t ship) has added another problem, on top of fashion shows from major designers being cancelled worldwide.

Many have been wondering “when are things going back to normal?” with no answer in sight, due to the fact that there is no going back to normal as the old model came crashing down around the whole fashion industry. This is the “Fashion Apocalypse” that no one saw coming! Leaving designers and fashion houses to re-think and re-imagine new digital business and marketing strategies in a post Covid-19 world.

“Retail shops are shutting down while e-commerce sites are overloading—and in some cases crashing—from so many virtual orders. Face masks (both the N-95 kind and the non medical grade cloth fashion street wear ones) are in high demand.”

Major Fashion shows around the globe had to be cancelled or “postponed” , and in some cases provide a fashion show format online. Giorgio Armani barred a public show in Milan in the midst of the outbreak in late February (but provided an online viewing).

The future of fashion in a post Covid-19 world will be Digital Catwalks and Virtual Fashion Shows. “COVID-19 is forcing brands to engage and experiment with immersive technologies. we’ve been inundated with requests on how to create virtual clothing, virtual clothing, virtual catwalks and virtual showrooms.” Said Matthew Drinkwater , head of Fashion innovation Agency (SIA), in Forbes.

Easter for me as a small child was simply a “Spring Christmas”, when we would get dressed up in new outfits, hunt for colored eggs (after we painted and hid them), go out to dinner at a nice restaurant (in our new dress clothes) or have a formal dress up dinner party at home, and yes we would receive toys/gifts and candy!

As I got older, I questioned the lack of all the religious elements of this “Christian Holiday” in our annual observance, and began to beg the question “What does an adult sized “Bunny Rabbit” wandering around the globe (All overnight! Much like the St. Nick) delivering brightly painted colored eggs (Hard Boiled), and than later chocolate rabbits and marshmallow chicks (yeah, chickens) along with sweet tarts and other assorted candies, has to do with the Christian Sun-God Myth of Jesus, walking out of his (stone) tomb after a three day flat line?

But no one wanted to take that question, and those that did only gave answers as far-fetched as the Tooth Fairy/Santa Claus/ and yes…..The Easter Bunny! A figment of their bloody imagination. So I studied and researched to get to the truth myself.

The Ancient Pagan Fertility and Re-Birth Rites of this holiday predates Christianity, and in fact so is the “Slain and Risen” sun-god myth, which made it perfect for The First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD to superimpose the “Christ Resurrection” sun-god myth over it. The council also decreed that the first Sunday after the full moon following the March Equinox shall be the day that the holiday wil be observed. That is why it’s is a “movable feast” and occurs on different dates world-wide, with the eastern churches using the Julian calendar, and the western churches using the Gregorian calendar. Even the name Easter was taken from the ancient goddess of the Vernal Equinox (Spring) “Eostre,  (also known as Ostara, Austra, and Eastre.) One of the most revered aspects of Ostara for both ancient and modern observers is a spirit of renewal. Celebrated at Spring Equinox on March 21, Ostara marks the day when light is equal to darkness, and will continue to grow and renew.”

She was also known as “Ishtar” to the Assyrians and Babylonians, and “Easter” was her celebration, as she was a fertility & sex goddess. Offerings and Sex/Fertility rites were preformed in her honor, with the symbols of “Eggs & Rabbits” representing her powers of Birth and Renewal.

(Ishtar)   

The Anglo-Saxons in the eight century adapted the name Eastra, the goddess of spring to the Christian resurrection celebration after the mandate of the Council of Nicaea, and named it Easter Sunday (Easter is always on a Sunday due to the Sun-God Myth).

Easter with Sex/Rebirth/Renewal/Fertility at it’s heart is a “Fertility Holiday”, with the thinly disguised right in your face symbols: Bunnies, Eggs and Spring Chicks I discovered in my research and study. All of this correlating with the mating season (spring) for most mammals to ensure reproduction. Modern terms like “Spring Cleaning” and “Rabbits Multiply” stem from Easter’s true nature.

Sources:

1. Larry Boemler “Asherah and Easter,” Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 18, Number 3.

2. The True Origin of Easter, 6 https://reg.org/books/ttooe.html
3. Easton, M G. Easton’s Bible Dictionary. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893

Now for as long as I can remember,(about since I was 15) the folklore of standing an egg on it’s end during the exact time of the Vernal Equinox was known to me.  But being a science and medicine major since my teens, I needed to practice it….prove it using the scientific method.

So for fifteen years straight, I purchased a dozen eggs to conduct my experiments on the day (and exact time) of the Spring Equinox, and recording the data of how: successful, difficult, easy, and for how long I could get the eggs to stand on end, as well as utilizing different surfaces.

While it is true that you can stand an egg on any day of the year (if you’re very skillful, or lucky), however the same does not hold true for me (yes I tried it on different days and times of the year, with no success), and in fact the only time that I was able to balance an egg on end was on the Vernal Equinox.

Scientifically there’s no (as yet detected or measured) gravitational change on the Spring Equinox that would seem to assist the egg standing upright……but it work every time, every year!

I noticed that from the exact time of the Vernal Equinox, the egg will stand for varying amounts of time (usually about 17-26 minutes) and would fall on it’s side and sometimes break (depending on the surface) after a limited time.

Well considering this so called myth is so long lived, you know what they say….every myth has a seed, of underlying truth to it!