In two days in January alone it sold 80 million masks. Taobao, a Chinese online retailer, has sold hundreds of thousands of face masks per day for the last year.

Individual brands aren’t necessarily as popular as the place where you buy masks from. When many of them started wearing black face masks, that trend spread amongst young fans too. K-pop stars are also frequently spotted wearing surgical face masks, which has spurred their popularity. Brands like Off White and high end online retailers such as SSENSE sold masks designed to complement an outfit, and maybe protect you from pollutants. Masks quickly became an important element of streetwear in Asia. More recent is the trend for incorporating face masks into fashion, as Chinese designers brought them to runways after 2014, when air pollution levels started to rise in many cities. Sales spiked again in the middle of the twentieth century and in 2003, more countries adopted the practice as Sars, and swine flu several years later, made it more taboo to not be wearing a face mask than wearing one. The history of wearing masks as a barrier against disease goes back to the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic and outbreaks in Japan from the 1930s.

Despite the exemptions, the wearing of face masks in areas where it is not legally required is still encouraged if you may find yourself somewhere crowded or enclosed-particularly around those you would not normally meet with. You are also not required to wear face masks in nightclubs, gyms, photography studios and some other exceptions. Rules have not yet changed for wearing face coverings in venues such as cafes, restaurants and pubs. These measures included a requirement to wear a face covering in most indoor public spaces (shops, cinemas, theatres etc) and public transport, to work from home if you can and to let fresh air in if you meet indoors with outdoor meetings encouraged. In December 2021, the UK government announced “Plan B” would be implemented, as a response to the spread of the Omicron variant. Over in the US, searches for face masks on Amazon sunk from no.1 for much of 2020 down to no.50 by May 2021. However, the changing landscape of mask mandates means the amount of people on the lookout for new coverings has declined. We're now more than 18 months into the COVID-19 global pandemic and people have become accustomed to wearing all kinds of face masks on a daily basis – from medical masks to ones made by more traditional clothing brands. A growing body of research indicates that wearing masks – even if they’re not closely fitted or medical grade – can slow the spread of viral loads by up to 80 per cent. They were no longer an indicator of disease and more akin to putting on a jacket when it’s cold. They’ve now become a part of daily life for much of the world since the word “coronavirus” became more familiar to us all in the early months of 2020. Face masks became a matter of common sense in Asia after the 2002 Sars epidemic.

Onone perfect mask