Because every bit of sturdy take-it-to-the-bank information has the half-life of a housefly these days, 18 East founder and designer Antonio Ciongoli’s plans for keeping his business going seem to change every 12 hours. At one point, he got together with his employees and did what a lot of businesses around the world have probably done lately: “We had a meeting where we were like, ‘We don't know what we're going to do.” In March, when it appeared imminent that New Yorkers would be asked to shelter in place, Ciongoli drove to his brand’s Manhattan-based shop, loaded all the stock there into his car, and headed back to his home in central New Jersey. Now, 18 East’s packing and shipping department is a one-man operation run entirely out of Ciongoli’s basement. (It’s him. He’s the man.)

Figuring out how to continue moving product is just one of a legion of problems with seemingly no good answers Ciongoli is confronting right now. His life seems dominated by a fashion-tinted Murphy’s Law: If there’s a way the coronavirus pandemic can affect a designer, it’s happened to him. On a global level, he manufactures products in India and Nepal and has watched as those supply chains break down. He’s already thinking about how he can audible manufacturing to the U.S., but is hitting a brick wall. “Even if you wanted to, you couldn't—the factories aren't here,” he says. He's considering the folks delivering his hand-packaged products every day, who are taking on risks to help him keep 18 East going. “I feel bad they're telling people not to go out—[but] my business is forcing this person to go out,” he says. On top of all that, Ciongoli is keeping an eye on—and serving as part-time teacher for—his three young children.

I jumped on the phone to talk to Ciongoli about balancing fatherhood with brandhood, his one-man shipping department, and why he thinks we’ll all wear suits once this is all over. The conversation started like every conversation now begins.

GQ: How have you been holding up throughout all this?

Ciongoli: You know, it could be a lot worse. We're incredibly lucky in this situation to be small. If you have a network of retail stores and you had to shut those down, you're in a lot of trouble. If you're a wholesale brand and you have to rely on all these vendors, then you're in a lot of trouble. We're really fortunate that we're not that old and we set out to try to stand on our own two feet and just keep it really small. In a lot of ways that's protected us.

For us, [pivoting the business] was almost as simple as me doing a couple runs from the New York office to New Jersey and bringing all the stock to my house so that I could continue to ship. I transplanted the entire studio to my basement and I'm just packing and shipping—I'm just doing it all myself. It's taking a long time.

The thing that gets a little bit scary for us is that the vast majority of our production is done in India. In India, they've shut down the country. [The spread of the virus] hasn't gotten bad yet, but it's very easy to see how India becomes the worst place in the world overnight because it's so densely populated.

After that, I can stretch it out a little bit. I've got product in my house through what could basically be May. After that, we don't have anything. I don't have approved samples yet. It has the potential to be a really rough summer if the worst-case scenario in India becomes the worst-case scenario. So while we're doing okay now, I don't know what that's going to be like towards the end of the summer.