Sustainable Luxury

Managing Social and Environmental Performance in Iconic Brands

Miguel Angel Gardetti, Ana Laura Torres, Miguel Angel Gardetti, Ana Laura Torres

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351287784
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Business
• Sous-sujet: Business General

Most consumers of luxury products and services use them as status symbols – symbols of success. However, the definition of success – and the way it is perceived by others – is changing. Increasingly, consumers want the brands they use to address growing concerns that luxury products invariably come at a heavy social and environmental cost. The luxury industry faces its biggest challenge yet in satisfying an emerging demand of successful consumerism – products that meet high environmental, social and ethical standards.This collection sees internationally renowned fashion, luxury and sustainability experts come together to explore the challenges faced - and solutions developed - by luxury goods companies in sourcing, producing and marketing luxury products. Sustainable Luxury: Managing Social and Environmental Performance in Iconic Brands represents the most comprehensive collection of current writing on the nascent relationship between sustainability and luxury. It will be essential reading for academics researching sustainable development in the fashion and luxury industries and it will provide invaluable guidance for practitioners seeking the latest research to help them meet consumer demand for sustainable goods and services.

Part I

1
Is sustainable luxury fashion possible?

Frédéric Godart and Sorah Seong

INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France

Introduction

Since the 1980s there has been increasing awareness towards ethical fashion both from the producer and the consumer sides, particularly with regards to ethical sourcing and apparel production (Shen et al. 2012). Ethical fashion, to use a definition suggested by Joergens (2006: 361), is ‘fashionable clothes that incorporate fair trade principles with sweatshop-free labour conditions while not harming the environment or workers by using biodegradable and organic cotton’. Based on the notion that ethical fashion can be achieved on both social and environmental dimensions, we divide the concepts into two highly interrelated categories: Ecosustainable fashion and socially responsible fashion. This conceptual categorisation is in line with the so-called 3P (people–planet–profit) or triple bottom line (TBL) approach (Elkington 1998). The TBL approach posits that a ‘corporation’s ultimate success or health can and should be measured not just by the traditional financial bottom line, but also by its social/ethical and environmental performance’ (Norman and MacDonald 2004: 243).

Eco-sustainable fashion engages in environment-related practices with the specific aim of reducing environmental damage during and after the production process. One example of this is producing longer lasting products. On the other hand, socially responsible fashion focuses on improving issues related to communities, working conditions or salaries. It should be noted that, although eco-sustainable and socially responsible fashion can be distinguished at the conceptual level, the distinction is often tricky in practice. The sustainability effort is driven by, and aims to achieve, the goal of benefiting both people and planet. Thus, while the focus of this paper is on eco-sustainable luxury fashion, the discussion can also be relevant to the social component of TBL.

Such mounting interest in ethical fashion is accompanied by the question of whether eco-sustainable fashion is compatible with the very definition of fashion. Fashion, in itself, can be a confusing term, as there are usually two meanings attached to the word: fashion as change and fashion as dress (Kawamura 2011). In the empirical setting of the fashion industry, the distinction between these two meanings is not very useful, as fashion can be defined as a process of ‘recurrent change’ (Aspers and Godart 2013) in dress. That fashion is ‘a passing trend, something transient and superficial’ (Gardetti and Torres 2012: 7) involves the unnecessary replacement of still useable fashion items, such as clothing and fashion accessories. The renewal cycle for fast fashion collections can be less than two weeks.

On the other hand, eco-sustainable fashion is the type of fashion that can last long enough to reduce negative environmental externalities. In the industry’s retail markets, the introduction of fast fashion as a new business model has increased the rate of premature product replacement and fashion outmodedness (Kozlowski et al. 2012). Does this mean that fashion cannot stand hand in hand with the pursuit of sustainability? This incompatibility issue can be even more pronounced in the fashion industry’s luxury segments, where change is systematically driven and maintained by bi-annual fashion seasons. While change can be slow at the bottom of the ‘fashion pyramid’ (e.g. commodity and fashion basics) (Doeringer and Crean 2006), and probably slowed down in the mass market segments, slow change may not work for the higher bound of the pyramid (i.e. haute couture and designer collections), because the luxury identity of these segments is based on change. In the next sections, we will examine the concept of luxury, and luxury fashion in particular, and discuss the specific sustainability opportunities and challenges faced by the luxury fashion industry.

Luxury: what are we talking about?

What is luxury? As pointed out by Kapferer and Bastien (2008), there is a lot of confusion surrounding the definition of this concept. In standard economics, luxury goods are defined ‘as those whose income elasticity of demand is greater than one’ (Kemp 1998: 592) or, in other words, goods for which demand increases as income rises. However, this definition does not give a fully satisfying answer to what defines the core attributes of luxury goods, other than consumers’ responses at different income levels. Outside the mainstream economic model, Veblen (1899) was one of the first to undertake an analysis of luxury in the context of a comprehensive theory of social class dynamics. With a renewed interest in the subject matter in the 1990s, Allérès (1997) defined luxury by building a three-level hierarchy, each representing a different degree of accessibility: ‘inaccessible luxury’, corresponding to exclusive models (e.g. in fashion, haute couture); ‘intermediary luxury’, corresponding to expensive replicas of individual models (e.g. specially tailored dresses that are full or partial duplicates of haute couture models); and ‘accessible luxury’, corresponding to products made in larger series (e.g. luxury brand’s ready-to-wear lines). Berry (1994: 24) undertook a philosophical approach towards the conceptualisation of luxury based on the needs/wants distinction and, following Sombart (1913), highlighted the idea that luxury is ‘an expenditure that goes beyond what is necessary’. There is no scholarly consensus regarding the definition of luxury to date, but the complex nature of luxury has been discussed widely by scholars of different disciplinary origins.

In The Republic, the Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 380 BCE) discusses luxury as something that is scarce, highly desirable and indicative of individual social success. He argues that its scarcity is the root cause for wars and conflicts, and therefore luxury should be banned. This first European theory of luxury set the tone for subsequent debates on luxury and its intellectual development, at least within the European philosophical tradition (Godart 2011). Luxury stems from the desires of powerful, high status consumers who want to assert their status and power. These consumers converge on scarce products or services to assert their identity and, as a result, scarcity becomes consubstantial to luxury. Due to its link with status and power, luxury has often been at the centre of a moral debate. On the positive side, we have scholars such as French philosopher Voltaire (1736) who sees luxury as a source of Earthly joys and of economic development. On the negative side, philosophers and moralists such as French philosopher Rousseau (1750–1755) consider luxury morally reprehensible, not only because it causes conflicts over the acquisition of scarce resources, such as gold (i.e. the Platonician argument), but also because it is an activity that turns people away from engaging in more valuable endeavours, such as studying philosophy or leading a moral political life.

From this negative perspective, luxury is seen as feeding itself on scarce resources and continuously triggering or stirring conflicts. This particular view on luxury has been popularised in movies such as Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006), which triggered consumer awareness on where their jewellery comes from, or the story behind it. Consequently, luxury jewellery brands are now gearing the jewellery industry in the direction of responsible practices, such as responsible sourcing of gemstones and precious metals (Doyle and Bendell 2011). Luxury may not be 100% exempt from the criticism that individuals’ desire for luxury generates conflicts, as our history has witnessed. However, as we can see from the cases of luxury jewel-lery brands, there are numerous ways in which the luxury industry can bring positive changes to the process of luxury creation in the first place.

Furthermore, unlike commoditised markets, luxury can offer a unique opportunity for creating sustainable business environments due to its two central features that set it apart from other market segments or industries. First, luxury is (often-times) characterised by craftsmanship based on unique skills. This allows luxury to provide high quality and rewarding business conditions. Second, luxury is characterised by its particular relationship with time, for its value is inscribed in the long term. This allows luxury to offer a sustainable business model for resource management and high quality product development, just to name a few relevant elements of sustainable luxury.

When it comes to starting a conversation about the opportunities and challenges of luxury industries’ sustainability efforts, trying to narrow down definitions of luxury may not be the most pragmatic approach. The reason is that luxury is a highly diversified construct, and there is a lack of general consensus among scholars regarding the definition of luxury. Rather than conceptualising luxury, Chevalier and Mazzalovo (2008) start out by building different segments of luxury in order to define what luxury really is. These segments include: exclusive ready-to-wear and fashion accessories; luxury jewellery and watches; selective perfumes and cosmetics; some wines and spirits; luxury automobiles; hotels; tourism; and private banking. Based on Chevalier and Mazzalovo’s segmentation of luxury, this chapter focuses on one specific segment: luxury fashion (that is to say, exclusive ready-to-wear and fashion accessories).

The relationship between luxury and fashion is quite an ambiguous one, as fashion does not fully belong to the luxury world as it once did up until the turn of the 19th century, but overlaps with luxury in its most expensive and exclusive segments. Both luxury and fashion share the common need for social differentiation, but they differ in two major aspects: first, whereas luxury is timeless, fashion is ephemeral (relationship to time); and, whereas luxury is for self-reward, fashion is not (relationship to self) (Kapferer 2012). Thus, luxury fashion seems to be a contradiction in terms—as luxury it is supposed to last, but as fashion it is supposed to change frequently. However, since the essence of fashion is change, luxury fashion gives exclusive access to enforced change. Luxury fashion is recurrent change at its highest level, and it is distinguished from other luxury segments by its constant pressure for change.

Luxury fashion: how is it different from lower-end fashion?

The centrality of waste and change

Several scholars have studied ways of representing the fashion industry as a collection of different segments. A useful representation introduced by Doeringer and Crean (2006) sees fashion as a pyramid: luxury fashion, such as haute couture and designer collections, is placed at the top of the pyramid, while commodity and fashion basics, such as socks and underwear, sit at the bottom. Luxury fashion goods are produced by high status fashion houses, which organise bi-annual fashion shows.¹ A limited number of fashion brands are able and allowed to display their know-how and creativity at these fashion shows, which in turn maintains their high status. Haute couture fashion shows are largely a remnant of a former era when couturiers dominated the industry and catered to a wealthy clientele. Thus, such shows now represent an important investment for the participating fashion houses and are seen as a marketing expense by many. Today, luxury fashion is comprised mostly of designer labels belonging to major international fashion and luxury business groups, such as LVMH, Kering (formerly known as PPR) or Puig (Barkey and Godart 2013).

In pursuing eco-sustainability, luxury fashion is faced with additional challenges that do not necessarily exist in other luxury segments, such as luxury jewellery and watches. In luxury fashion, change itself embodies a form of luxury. Unlike in other luxury segments where products are made to last (e.g. ...