Dior Reopens Baby Dior Factory to Produce Masks
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HELPING OUT: As part of luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s ongoing efforts to help supply masks to health-care personnel during the coronavirus crisis, Dior has reopened a Baby Dior workshop in order to produce masks.
The Baby Dior factory in Redon, in the Brittany region of France, started producing masks on Tuesday with volunteer staff, the French fashion house said.
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“Dior is thereby actively committed to helping and protecting all those who are on the frontline of caring for us on a daily basis,” Dior said, paying tribute to the staff at the atelier for their “courageous” work.
Many French industrial facilities are at a standstill as the country prepares to enter its third week of confinement in a bid to stem the tide of new COVID-19 cases. Dior did not specify how many workshops it has in France, or how many people usually work at the Baby Dior facility.
Visiting the country’s biggest mask production factory on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said France should produce 10 million masks per week by the end of April, triple its previous capacity. He hopes the country will be self-sufficient by year-end.
The French government has called on fashion and textile companies for assistance producing masks and turned to other industries for help making hydroalcoholic sanitizer.
LVMH has pledged to order 40 million masks from a Chinese industrial supplier to address the shortage in French hospitals. In addition, it has retooled its perfumes and cosmetics production units to manufacture and distribute large quantities of hydroalcoholic gel.
Meanwhile, Kering said it would purchase 3 million imported Chinese surgical masks that it will provide to French health services. Its Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent brands are also manufacturing masks.
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