Guilt Edged

While the luxury houses’ corrective strategy has been to focus on the less capricious super-rich – epitomised by Hermès’ move from handbags to helicopters – their discreet investigations into wider consumer aspirations have become almost forensic. The recent buzz term “experiential luxury” has already been replaced by “luxury service culture”, while the once-exciting come-on “limited edition” has already been refined into “customisation”. But undoubtedly, the most noticeable label being dangled in front of luxury consumers is “ethical” – once regarded as so counterintuitive it was tactfully swept under the carpet.

LVMH group chairman Bernard Arnault has actually been green for two decades, creating his company’s Environmental Affairs Department in 1992, the year Al Gore started penning his first conservation treatise Earth in the Balance. Back then though, Louis Vuitton’s geothermally powered warehouses and rainwater-recycling drums were considered the antithesis of the sort of glamour deemed essential to hawk pricey frocks. It was not until last year that Arnault stated that his conglomerate’s health depends on it heeding the growing ethical concerns, particularly of younger consumers, in Western countries. Those bloated markets, Arnault says, now demand evidence of sustainability and responsibility as well as refined luxury.

“The Gucci years are over,” proclaims Tom Ford, who made his name creatively directing that company through the ostentatious 1990s. “Consumers, at least in the West, are now demanding ethical luxury. People want to demonstrate their environmental or social consciences – they are no longer fashion victims who covet items because they see a celebrity owning them. They still want and desire fine things. Luxury is not going out of style; it needs to change its style. The industry can no longer be propelled purely by logo-driven marketing. Luxury used to mean hard-to-find. Then it became hard-to-miss. We need to replace hollow with deep.”

In fact, ethical luxury is itself becoming pretty hard to miss. Not only has a flurry of outfits sprung up to pamper the environmentally conscious high-spender – such as the UK’s cashmere-to-candles purveyor Bamford & Sons – long-standing names are bombarding consumers with their green credentials. Take the jewellery sector. Tiffany & Co’s website makes a big deal of the environmentally sensitive ways the company sources its materials. Laurence Graff, chairman of Graff Diamonds, says getting rid of so-called conflict diamonds is not sufficient and that his company is “conducting environmentally conscious job-creating production in Botswana”. And an Association for Responsible Mining has been established to meet the growing demand for “ethical gold” and sustainably mined minerals.