In the summer of 2018, Burberry came under fire for burning millions of dollars’ worth of leftover seasonal stock.

They said it was to protect their brand and also that the energy captured from the fire was renewable so, therefore, environmentally friendly.

In short, they missed the point.

The world went wild, and Burberry suffered a huge PR backlash. As a result, they promised, no more fires. While it’s a victory to know that social pressure can make huge brands turn corners, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Co-founder of the UK-based Fashion Revolution, Orsola de Castro hints that the problem doesn’t stop there. “For every Burberry, there’s hundreds of other brands doing exactly the same at several points in their fashion supply chains.”

Burberry aren’t the only major players making headlines; Chanel and Louis Vuitton are also accused of slashing stock and Richemont bought back close to 500 million dollars of their own watches to be dismantled.

While there is an argument that luxury brands need to protect their stock from ending up cheapened on the grey market, at what cost?

Luxury brands haven’t embraced sustainability, and in a world of churn and burn, this spells out disaster for our planet.

Waste is very much a problem of the privileged. In less developed countries, there isn’t the same purchasing power, which means that goods are reused over and over again until they disintegrate to nothing.

In the west we seem to have an insatiable hunger for newness; and this is contributing to the boom of fast fashion. One of the biggest culprits and active contributors to the worlds waste problem.

In an article for The Guardian, Kirsten Brodde from the Detox My Fashion campaign said: “Because fashion is a high-volume business with more than 100bn garments produced each year, consumers’ closets are already overflowing with unworn clothes, creating an overstock problem for many companies. It’s high time for the whole fashion industry to start dealing with overstock at its source: by slowing down production and rethinking the way it does business.”

It’s a staggering reality that fashion is snapping at the heels of the fossil fuel industry when it comes to being the biggest polluter of our planet.

Fast production of cheaper clothes means mass crops, synthetic fibers, and heaps of used clothes in landfills when the next seasonal trend comes along or when the garment shows speedy signs of wear and tear.

These cloth cut landfills are sprouting up at the speed of light across the globe, and from production to disbarment they are polluting our air, our water, and our soil. We are in an era of consume, consume, consume – in the past two decades alone, America has seen a 500 percent increase in clothing consumption and every year the world collectively consumes over 80 million items of clothing.

The environment cannot keep up with this demand, mass consumption will eventually lead to deforestation, dirty soil, soaring greenhouse gasses, and polluted water sources.

Technology too is moving just as fast as the seasonally changing fashion trends. Every few months a shiny new smart phone hits the shelves as the ultimate status symbol.

Even beyond status, technology is created to have a quick sell by date so that consumers line up to grab the latest model. Afterall, the average phone life is just two years.

The UN warned that electronic junk like discarded laptops and phones had grown a swift 8% over the last two years and that in 2016 there was enough electronic waste that it would weigh the equivalent of 4500 Eiffel Towers.

Not only are we having to find places to stash this waste, but this is waste filled with potentially dangerous substances that will seep into our earth.

It’s easy to place the blame on the consumer, but that wouldn’t be taking responsibility for our own actions as luxury brands. Because we are the ones pushing this narrative.

We are the ones selling the message of fast luxury, we are the ones creating products with a limited lifespan, and we are the ones delivering a feeling of obsolescence.

In a thesis by Daniel Keeble titled The Culture of Planned Obsolescence in Technology Companies, the author says;

Planned obsolescence was created to increase wealth and enforce a capitalist approach. But there is a downside too. The environment has become an issue that is hard to ignore, and one that has to be addressed if products such as phones and TV are to be discarded so readily.

Companies are ultimately responsible for creating a change. EWaste, today is excessive, but if the products were made with environmentally friendly materials or had materials that could be reused, then there are no reason why this manor of purchasing couldn’t continue.

The waste would either become a second-degree commodity with value of its own or alternatively become a safe, environmentally friendly, waste product. Unfortunately, little has been done to boost this idea, as dealing with the waste is not a profitable business, as yet.

If consumerism is to continue its growth, but the environmental issues to take a positive turn for the better, then things have to change.

Of course, luxury brands need to nurture desire for the next big thing in order to keep their sales ticking. But there are larger stakes on the table –and by encouraging an insatiable hunger to consume we are gambling our most precious collective asset – our planet.

Beyond the trim of fast fashion, other avenues of luxury are also contributing to the swift downfall of our environment.

The food industry is also under the spotlight for the extortionately high levels of waste.

Lavish hotels are famed for inviting guests to kick back and unwind, in a carefully cultivated world where everything is fully taken care of – including endless access limitless menus of crafted cocktails, beautiful buffets, and dizzying array of food. As hotels can’t count on how much each individual will eat this often leads to a wild amount of food waste.

An article published in Eco Business on the Unseen Scandal of Hotel Food Waste pointed out the following logistics;

The dinner buffet at Edge, the all-day dining restaurant at Pan Pacific Singapore, is refreshed every two hours to cater to the continuous stream of customers.

Singapore’s National Environment Agency regulations stipulate that food cannot be kept on hold for more than four hours at a certain temperature, says Michele Greggio, executive chef of Pan Pacific Singapore. “But to be safer and ensure we are providing the freshest food possible, we have a two-hour standard, which is in the middle of service.” 

On average each guest contributes 1kg of waste per night and 25% of all food that passes through a kitchen is lost to waste. When you do a quick mind scan of all the hotels and rooms filled with guests every night, all the restaurants and dining rooms in the world – those numbers quickly start to mount up.

Luxury brands like Sofitel and Pullman report to tossing out 27 tons of food waste annually.

Now that we have  learned about the dangers of waste, let’s explore the solution.

When we buy into the beauty of luxury, we lovingly run our fingers across the handstitched Made in Italy label. We conjure dreams of Tuscan hills of rolling green and gold, deep set family businesses which have lasted for centuries, the scent of hand-cut leather, and the deft hands of needle and thread.

The reality is sometimes much different than the fairy-tale. In an expose piece for the LA Times, a journalist ran a story on big name brands importing cheap overseas labor into Italy’s heritage leather scene in an effort to cut costs. The article warns would be buyers;

‘These days, the coveted “Made in Italy” label on those Prada bags and Gucci shoes, which can quadruple a price, may not mean what it used to. Thousands of Tuscan factories that produce the region’s fabled leather goods are now operated and staffed by Chinese. Though located in one of Italy’s most picturesque and tourist-frequented regions, many of the factories are nothing more than sweatshops with deplorable conditions and virtually indentured workers.’

While buyers are used to hesitating over buying a garment made in china, Cambodia, or Bangladesh, they usually would feel clean and comforted purchasing goods with a Made in Europe logo. But it’s a false sense of security. Back in the 90’s the Tuscan region became flooded with imported labor from Wenzhou in China. These workers set up textile businesses in garages or joined the manufacturing houses of big-name brands like Prada and Gucci, churning out Made in Europe textiles for a fraction of the cost of European workers. They worked eye-wateringly long hours, the smaller businesses imported cut price textiles from back in China, and they grew. In this piece for The New Yorker, D.T Max notes;

The Chinese firms gradually expanded their niche, making clothes for middle-tier brands, like Guess and American Eagle Outfitters. And in the past decade they have become manufacturers for Gucci, Prada, and other luxury-fashion houses, which use often inexpensive Chinese-immigrant labor to create accessories and expensive handbags that bear the coveted “Made in Italy” label. 

The piece goes on to note that even a few years ago; ‘In 2014, an Italian artisan spoke to the investigative television journalist Sabrina Giannini. Gucci had given him a big contract, he said, but the pay was so low—twenty-four euros a bag—that he had subcontracted the work to a Chinese mill, where employees worked fourteen-hour days and were paid half what he made. When the bags made it to stores, they were priced at between eight hundred and two thousand dollars.’

While a spokesperson for Gucci reported these accusations as falsehood and has promised to increase scrutiny of their supply chain, the underlying message throughout these two articles is clear – big name luxury brands are cutting costs to increase profit and are selling a story of artisanship that doesn’t match the reality. Of course there’s always the argument that business is business, but consumers turn to luxury because they want to invest in the best.

Back in 2007, British born brand Burberry moved one of their welsh factories to China in an effort to increase profits. The move caused a celebrity backlash and general uproar as the business were seen to be turning their back on their shiny promise of corporate social responsibility, especially as the move threatened to put a lot of people out of jobs in a small Welsh town.

The move went ahead regardless, with Burberry holding up their hands apologetically and saying; ‘its business, it’s the right decision’. But isn’t there then a hypocrisy on the table for a brand that has built its legacy on a Made in Britain label? For Burberry it wasn’t a do or die situation like it was with car manufacturers like Jaguar and Aston Martin, it was in the interest of short-term profit, at the expense of their integrity. A few years later and reports were that Burberry had to pull out of China due to concerns over workers conditions. A scandal it wasn’t hard to see coming from the start.

Read the 24 Anti-Laws of Marketing and you see that Burberry went against the luxury strategy with this move. Rule 18 points out that luxury brands should not relocate their fashions because; ‘Luxury goods are unconcerned about cost control, at least to this degree. It is more important for a luxury item to be steeped in a culture and being made in a certain place is worth the expense of maintaining this association. To be made elsewhere is to dilute the identity and perceived value of the brand.’ Another law being broken here; law 23; Anti-Laws of Marketing – 23: Do not look for cost reduction: cost reduction is an obvious mistake that luxury brands should avoid: it is done to keep prices down and is often indifferent to the impact on quality. Luxury brands recognize that there is a high cost to providing high quality and compromising on quality is entirely unacceptable to their customers.

While fashion gets the brunt force of accusations against global value chains, the technology sector also brings huge problems to the table. One of the largest plants for manufacturing Apple products can be found in Shenzhen at the Longhua complex. Marked as one of the hardest factories for journalists and reporters to get into, since 2010 the compound has had a reported 18 suicide attempts and 14 confirmed deaths according to this piece by The Guardian. Long work hours, poor conditions, and harsh treatment from managers were reported from inside the grey walls. In 2012 50 workers gathered on the roof and threatened to jump unless conditions improved. In response to all of the above, the factory put up body nets, made workers sign a declaration not to kill themselves and even Steve Jobs noted that the spate of suicides were in-keeping with the national average.

Now that we have  learned about the dangers of global value chains, let’s explore the solution.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. ~ Carl Sandburg

Even the word luxury rolls off the tongue in a long and languorous way – you are supposed to feel the lilt of every letter. Say it quickly and it loses its essence, becomes something harsh on the tongue. The romanticism of luxury comes from slow production. It comes from the handcrafted workshops of some of the worlds greatest artisans, it is enjoyed by the consumer in a slow and sensual manner. It’s the thread that doesn’t unspool, the diamond that glints forever, the taste of To’ak chocolate or a fine wine that lingers.

Luxury is there to gift us a breath. Our world is a kaleidoscope clash of color, chaos, and consumerism. In a New York Post by Dr Stephanie Brown, she sketches out the danger of society’s self-destructive addition to faster living. She warns us that ‘Society is now dominated by beliefs, attitudes and ways of thinking that elevate the values of impulse, instant gratification and loss of control to first line actions and reactions. “I want it now!” or “Do it now!” are valued mantras for today’s with-it person, young or old. Add to instant action the belief that there are no limits to human power, no limits to action, no limits to success. Fueled by the grandiosity and omnipotence of these beliefs, people get high on the emotions of endless possibility with no need to ever stop or slow down.’

She goes on to say; ‘In a vicious circle, the exhausting fast pace of life promotes overstimulation and overscheduling, which become chronic stressors that lead to behavioral, mood and attention disorders.’

Luxury brands have a duty, to help their precious consumers to slow down. To gift them a moment away from the noise; to breathe, indulge, enjoy, and surrender to the serenity of experience.

While the fashion industry is one of the major purveyors of fastness, the travel industry is quickly snapping on its heels. This is even true of the multi-million-dollar yacht industry. A seven-day superyacht charter can cost close to quarter of a million dollars, and during this time its not unusual to be shipped around to seven different country-islands within that short burst of time. You are expected to soak up the culture and color of St Barts on a two-hour shopping spree at the port before climbing back onboard and being shipped off to your next destination.

Touching down in a place isn’t the same as truly experiencing a place. Travel is a wonderful thing – it gives people the chance to discover culture, color, and different perspectives. It helps us to see the value and the wonder in our earth, and it is a tangible experience that can stay with us until our dying day. Brands at the very top of this industry should understand this and strive to deliver in a way that helps their clients connect with the world they want to see.

In the Restless CMO, an article titled Why the new luxury is me, myself, and I starts with the following statistic ‘With an average 80- 81% people across the age groups in agreement, health and time is perceived to be the major new luxury in our lives. As life expectancy and awareness of ill-health grows, and dual income families become the norm, people are looking for new ways to remain healthy and ensure they have time for the important things in life, like family, friends and time for themselves. This has led to huge recent developments in the healthy eating industry, from superfoods through to the clean- and slow-eating movements, and in travel and leisure.’

This all fits into the narrative that for the one percent, the true meaning of luxury is quite simply – more time. HNWI’s didn’t get to where they are by kicking back, to grow empires takes huge swathes of your time, commitment, and energy. Sacrifices are made along the way, fewer precious moments spent with family, CEO’s constantly being on call, and bottom line – less time to simply rest, relax, and enjoy the wealth you have accumulated.

In this article for Reuters titled time, not bling is the ultimate luxury, President of Esplanade Capital, Shawn Kravetz says; ‘For me, luxury is a good hamburger and time with my family,’.

If time is the ultimate luxury, than for brands and bespoke makers to give their time to creating beautiful things lends itself well to being something that those who value the preciousness of time would want to invest in.

Stella McCartney is a good example of this, in an interview for Desert Island Discs she says; ‘I make to some extent fairly expensive clothes. I struggle with it but I also really struggle with fast fashion. With fabrics that aren’t beautiful and don’t use the best mills in Italy and Japan and England. “I think you also have to keep those crafts alive. You know I don’t think that good things should come really, really cheap. I’m trying to make something that last a lifetime. That you can give to your daughters and they can give to their daughters. I’m in that business. And I think that is luxury.’

She is right, dreaming and planning and creating beautiful things takes time. Time to think about and time to produce. Time is a non-renewable entity, we don’t get back what we have frittered away. Fast purchasing of fast products leaves us with a mundane humdrum of life rather than a meaningful warm glow. Like Tammy Eckenswiller from Rebecca Miinkoff says in this piece from Luxury Daily; ‘There’s something really luxurious about that connection that you have with brands and that brands can make with you. As a brand, you want to create more of that, to make a direct relationship that’s a more real-time conversation where you’re not just firing out campaigns and messaging. It helps you to think outside the box because consumers are co-creating with you.’

Now that we have  learned about the dangers of fastness, let’s explore the solution.

“What did one mirror see in the other?
Nothing.”  ― Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Homogenous luxury. If you stop for a second, you will see what a huge contradiction in terms this is. Homogenous – uniform, identical, undistinguishable. Luxury – rare, different, a cut above the rest. Yet, we are living in a time where global standardization is seeping into the cracks of the very best brands across the far-flung globe.

You could be wandering a shopping mall in the exotic far-east and think you were strolling through suburban America. You could wake up in a hotel in Hong Kong and have exactly the same morning experience you would have in Rome. The same cotton thread sheets, the same suite layout, the same continental breakfast.

For some, maybe this sense of familiarity breeds comfort and safety. But, for many this strips us of any emotional connection. We go through the motions, wrapped in a bubble, warm and content – but feeling very little.

Isn’t luxury here to wake us wonderfully from our slumber? Isn’t luxury all about a sensory journey, a chance to connect with the world around us on a deeper more deliriously delightful level? Isn’t luxury about one of a kind adventures, adapted just for you. By delivering cookie cutter experiences, brands aren’t living up to the promises on which they built their world.

Sometimes it feels like luxury is playing it safe, afraid to offer us new things or to fully embrace the bespoke art of being bold and different. But one of the most beautiful things about our planet is that it is full of diversity – colorful cultures, rare religions, and a tapestry of taste and sound from endless backgrounds, this melody of multiplicity extends across the board – even when it comes to those with affluence.

This means that luxury needs to stop cutting from the same cloth; this isn’t a one size fits all situation. People crave culture, experience and authenticity. This doesn’t mean that they don’t want a glorious global standard of quality – but that they do dream of the details being different.

For example if someone chooses to travel to Asia, they will want a little local flavor woven into their world. Otherwise, what was the point in traveling half-way across the globe to mirror the same experiences they have back home? From a Singapore sling on arrival to a carefully curated street food tour, a ride in a tuk-tuk, local art or photography adorning the walls – these are the tweaks that tantalize a traveler.

Boutique hotels get to be creative in their service without having to run every change up the chain. They are smaller and therefore better equipped to deliver a thoroughly personalized experience. Instead of the strive for perfection which the bigger hotels may have, the smaller boutique hotels celebrate their unique approach, even if it is a little rough around the edge, and it seems – the world is celebrating it with them.

In an article for Hotel Management on Striving for Imperfection, Sharan Pastricha CEO of Ennismore and Hoxton highlights how this is working in his favor “We don’t have brand standards. We are a hyper-local hotel, where our success is not defined by RevPAR, but how our guests and locals embrace us.” The article goes on to say that ‘while the panel was made up primarily of men and women representing independent-minded brands and companies, there was one obvious anomaly: Ben Pundole, VP of brand experience for Edition Hotels, Marriott International’s luxury lifestyle brand. If ever there was a company striving for perfection in the hotel space, it would be Marriott. Still, Pundole said the Edition brand is still a brand “where we embrace imperfection. We don’t want a tailor-made or manicured experience. That’s where creativity lives. There is no creativity in something formulaic.”’

In an opinion piece by Zak Selbert on Why Independent Hotels are Winning, he points out that; ‘Millennials like boutique hotels. Well-established brands are stuffy and undesirable in an era when a treehouse on Airbnb is sought after. Boutique hotels are better able to compete for the customers that Airbnb is siphoning from traditional brands because their customer experience can be tailored. Boutique owners have the flexibility to compete in a way that branded asset owners do not. They can benefit from branding strategies, digital media, big data and creativity to win their customers rather than sticking to an old formula that will soon be broken. The infrastructure and systems provided by major franchisors are golden handcuffs.’

This quest for originality within the travel industry is running even more rampant now that we have entered a so-called experience economy. The facts and figures have all been counted, we know that consumers are looking for brilliance over the banal.

The idea of the experience economy works at odds with the idea of standardization which beneath the skin is categorized as economy in productivity. When you standardize, you tend to do so in an effort to decrease costs and to increase productivity. Standardization also holds connotations in the business world of appealing to uniformity and transferability in a global context. It means that companies can branch out across the globe without the worry of different cultural characteristics of the countries they expand in seemingly having any effect on their business at all. Regardless of being in Vietnam, Bangladesh, San Francisco or Paris – the standard is the same.

But this checklist way of living doesn’t quite carry over into the luxury space – especially when talking about hospitality. A true luxury experience is sculpted around the consumer. Sure, mystery shopper checklists, rater agencies, and the like are helpful, as they give you the chance to collect data. But building an experience on data shared across the board isn’t going to give you much to mark yourself out when dealing with individuals.

Now that we have  learned about the dangers of sameness, let’s explore the solution.

‘Unconditional giving of ourselves, and what we have, reflects a nobility of spirit which reaches out and binds all of us.’ – Dean and Marianne Metropoulos, owners of Metropoulos & Co.

The luxury world is forever purring messages of self-love; it tells us to treat, spoil, splash out, and indulge ourselves. Whether it be a whiff of perfume, the taste of chocolate, or a new set of diamond earrings, the message remains that we are worth it.

There is nothing wrong with a hint of self-indulgence, but a 2009 study from Harvard University titled The Devil May Actually Wear Prada cited that being exposed to luxury is actually linked to higher levels of self-interest or to put it in blunter terms – selfishness.

In this study, students were exposed to luxury conditioning or non-luxury conditioning and shown photographs of associated products. The students were then asked to imagine themselves as CEO’s of a business and presented with various scenarios. The students who were exposed to luxury were dramatically more likely to endorse products regardless of the potential negative impact on society – for example cars with higher pollution levels or video games promoting violence.

The researchers noted that ‘Results … suggest that when primed with luxury, people endorsed self-interested decisions that could potentially harm others,’ and that ‘Luxury-primed individuals tend to make decisions that are self-interested and arguably unethical.’  The study went on to a further stage of word association that hinted that while exposure to luxury doesn’t make you a vindictive person, it can heighten feelings of indifference towards others.

Since 2009, the time lapse between the study and now has shifted slightly you could argue. While some belief systems pertaining to psychology and consumerism will be deeply imbedded, it does feel that the last few years has seen a rise in more philanthropic behavior from affluent consumers. Perhaps this is due to the rise of the dot com kids or the visibility of social media platforms.

Luxury brands have all the foundations they already need to join the philanthropic movement. If we take Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as an example, then luxury brands are already postponed at the very top of the pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid you have basic needs like food and shelter. Moving up you pass through stages of safety needs, belongness and love, to esteem, and finally the top tier – self actualization where one can achieve their fullest potential. Luxury is becoming more and more about self-actualization, meaning that giving back to the world should not be an issue. It is down to brands to encourage this behavior by using the message – not only in a one-off campaign, but as part of their everyday conversation.

If each brand partnered with a charity that fits their core business story – there would be ample opportunity to truly make a difference. For example Cartier with its rich history linking it to India could sponsor inter-cultural exchange programs or support local schools or designers in their studies. Some brands have already embraced this idea; Yacht Aid Global is an amazing program where superyachts can help deliver humanitarian aid and disaster relief to global communities. Their tagline is changing the world without changing course. This is an amazing chance for superyacht brands to give back to a highly relevant cause. Yet, only 44 superyachts out of ten thousand have signed up.

If luxury is at the pinnacle of the pyramid, we need to find a way to lead by example. To find a way of giving back to our communities, and to encourage our patrons to do the same. It doesn’t have to be as complicated as ferrying aid to hard hit Caribbean islands, it can be sponsorships, donations, raising awareness and we can make it easy for our consumers by encouraging active donation at the time of purchasing.

However, brands need to be careful that when committing to giving back to the community it runs deeper than being just another token gesture. Inconsequential charitable actions that are used to simply tick a box or try to align with the philanthropic movement as a marketing exercise first isn’t going to cut it with today’s savvy and socially conscious buyer. Richemont unfortunately tows this line on their website when talking about a blood drive where 180 units of blood were donated. Richemont have over 28000 employees, this effort is quite literally a drop in the ocean.

A quick glance at the LVMH Commitment section of their website and it becomes quickly clear that the company hold an exclusive attitude when it comes to giving back. They are not alone, plenty of luxury brands feel they need to keep their status bar high by not associating with so-called poverty at all, and only lending a helping hand to organizations that work within arts, education or entrepreneurship within their own country of origin.

Luxury brands would do well to turn their attention to start-ups to see what the modern-day consumer craves from the brands they admire. It’s as simple as Mable’s bamboo toothbrush, you buy one and they give one to a child in need, or Yuhme who with every reusable water bottle purchased will pay for 6 months of clean water to someone in the Central African Republic. These are just two examples from a line list, and those seeking inspiration should certainly check out this piece by Sustainable Chic on 25 ethical brands who are giving back.

Now that we have  learned about the dangers of self-love, let’s explore the solution.