Are leavers going to be referencing Lockdown or COVID-19 on their hoodies for the summer of 2021? Will the garments directly commemorate the events of the previous 15 months?
The UK has been fighting through the COVID-19 pandemic for much of 2020 and all of early 2021. The Indian/Delta variant, or another one, could cause local rules to be tightened in the summer or autumn. We may well see an upturn in fresh cases in the winter of 2021. Yet, with all the caveats, it feels like we are coming out the other side of the ‘dark times’ now, in spring 2021.
Thousands of kids/young adults will leave their school or college in a few more weeks. They will go to a new school, get a job or progress to further education. Collectively, they are ordering leavers’ hoodies this year just like they did last year.
Hoodies referencing Lockdown, Covid19 or Pandemic?
We have been asked whether any of the hoodies we are producing are referencing Lockdown, Covid19, Pandemic or other words/phrases relating to the events of 2020/21.
So far, we have seen only a few orders referencing the pandemic. ‘Lockdown Leavers’ being the only phrase used to date. We have also seen other producers offering designs around the concept of ‘Lockdown Leavers’.
COVID-19 hasn’t yet featured on any of the hoodies we have decorated and we think it probably won’t. The prime purpose of leaver’s hoodies is to give the people leaving something to help them remember and commemorate their shared experiences of the school. The hoodie should leave the wearer with a warm, safe feeling. Mentioning the shared experiences the lockdowns have brought to us all seems to be acceptable to many. Recalling by name the disease which has killed nearly 3.5 million people worldwide and continues to kill more every day hasn’t appealed to any of our clients so far.
Lockdown is an experience…
…one which has taught many of us to have a new perspective on things. COVID-19 is a disease which kills people.
As we head to the end of the normal ordering period for hoodies for 2021 school and college leavers we may get more orders where someone referred to the pandemic. We hope that everyone who decides what should be on the hoodies considers carefully. Everyone knows someone who has suffered during the last 15 months. People have had the disease, or suffered because of the restrictions imposed to prevent it from spreading further. Students have missed countless weeks and months of their education and the companionship of their school friends because of it.
2021 school leavers will never forget the impact of the pandemic and the restrictions on their lives which it caused. Their children and grandchildren will be told of the experience. History books will be written about it. Websites, TV programmes and countless other digital resources around the world will be awash with the ‘story’ of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impacts it had on individuals, on towns and villages, on countries—on all of us.
Based on the evidence we see so far, people don’t think that leavers hoodies should be used as a record of the pandemic beyond, in a few cases, recalling the shared lockdown experience.
Seems fair enough to us!
