"Twice a year, the luxury fashion houses of the world present their ready-to-wear clothing for the coming season. This creates an international traveling circus of retailers and reporters, high-spending customers and Instagram influencers, executives and a small army of public-relations professionals, many traveling from New York to London to Milan and finally to Paris.

"This year, the caravan’s arrival in Milan in mid-February intersected with an outbreak of Covid-19, the new coronavirus, in Italy, then the country worst hit by the illness outside of Asia.

The growing coronavirus threat chased the luxury fashion world from Milan to Paris. A real crisis looms for designers, retailers and shoppers

"And so, a thousand or so very well-clad people wondered for a few weeks: Would they become a global public health menace, a vector of transmission from the elite front rows of fashion shows to the world at large?"

Read The New York Times' piece on the impact of coronavirus on the international fashion industry.