Chaoran's Sustainability Blog

Luxury fashion brands, a combination of high quality, glamour, celebrity, and attitude. With a few exceptions, it’s been an industry not traditionally associated with concerns about environmental impacts, human rights, and wellness, even while those trends have been sweeping through the mainstream consumer products sector.

Sustainability in luxury fashion brands is a mindset. The current tendency is that luxury fashion brands can no longer ignore sustainability.

It seems like there is a big gap between luxury and sustainability. However, since sustainability is becoming more and more popular and it might be a mandatory requirement for many corporates’ operation, from my point of view luxury and sustainability are one in the same. If we consider the origin of luxury which is defined as know-how, heritage, rarity, transmission, respect for materials and human rights and quality you arrive at a definition that mirrors that of sustainability.

Why sus is a mindset, few pressures are here. First, the direct pressure: the laws are changing. The report points to the passage of the Modern Slavery Act in the U.K. in 2015, which requires larger companies doing business in Britain to publish a board-approved, public annual slavery and human trafficking statement. This kind of law clearly drives much more transparency and tracking up the supply chain. And it’s a good thing, as 71% of U.K. retailers and suppliers think it’s likely there are slaves in their supply chain.

Second, the indirect and more powerful pressure: social norms are changing, starting with high-profile tastemakers. Celebrities are more invested than ever in sustainability. These celebrities are lending their clout to the social and environmental agenda. Given their prominence in the fashion and luxury worlds, their beliefs, statements, and demands on companies matter. On a larger scale, the expectations of companies are changing generationally.

Third, the rise in demand from investment communities for sustainable business models. For years, investors have focused on a company’s financial performance and determined if purchasing stock was worth it based on if the company was profitable. Now, sustainable investing strategies are growing, as investors are realising that performance is intertwined in future social and environmental impact.

Moreover, there’s the harsh reality of biophysical limits seriously compromising these companies’ ability to source their products. Luxury goods require digging up, growing, and processing materials throughout the value chain, and that’s all getting tougher. Climate change is changing water availability and crop production around the world. That affects cotton-based products and, cashmere and angora, for example, require a great deal of water to process.

Furthermore, the trend nowadays is also the time governments and world leaders taken action too. With the launch of the Sustainability Development Goals, COP 21, and the passing of the Modern Slavery Act, creating, maintaining and growing companies with a positive social and environmental impact will soon become a legal obligation.

This is the last journal for the Sustainability Marketing class, through the research whole term about sustainability in fashion industry, especially luxury fashion industry, I gained a lot from the current situation and the future prospect I am thinking. Overall, sustainability is a mindset fro luxury fashion brand, it will become a more popular term and a mandatory word for this industry.

Traditionally, a ’boutique’ within a North American department store was simply a space dedicated to displaying a brand’s merchandise. The department store operated the shop, including its staffing, merchandising and displays.

The trend of the designer brand-owned concessions is changing this, however  what is a concession?

A concession is essentially a miniature store operated by the brand, and located within a larger store. Under this model, brands occupy space within the larger department store in return for paying a lease and a percentage of their sales to the larger store. Apparently, this relationship provides luxury brands with a number of significant advantages.

Piaget and David Yurman are the latest luxury brand to begin operating its Canadian shops-in-stores as leased concessions.

Piaget first Canadian location as a concession boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue Toronto Queen Street

For years, luxury brands have played key roles within upscale North American department stores, and this relationship is evolving towards the concession model. The current tendency is that more brands open their owned concessions as leased boutiques within North American leading luxurious department stores, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Holt Renfrew, Neiman Marcus, Barneys New York, as well as the more high-end flagship of some mid-priced department store, such as Bloomingdale’s, Hudson’s Bay and Nordstrom.

Holts Yorkdale Concessions

It is manifest that operating stores as concessions instead of opening free-standing bounties are more sustainable. The most important point is that larger department store shares the same resources with concessions such as floor, Loss Prevention Team, light, POS system, receipts concierge service, other infrastructure like washroom. Also, it has better operational feasibility. On top of that, concessions have the same atmosphere and standard of display as fee-standing boutiques but less construction area needs to be done before grand opening day, as well as repair and protection fee which means less operational costs needed. Moreover, according to different leasing agreements, some brands’ concessions may share the same packaging with department store, of example Burberry’s concessions within all Holt Renfrew stores use the same paper bay as what Holts use. This is a good way to save resources as well.

Holt Renfrew has revealed new details and renderings for its CF Pacific Centre store in Vancouver. The store is being expanded by about 40,000 square feet, and will be completed in a series of phases over the next few months.

The existing 147,000 square foot Holt Renfrew Vancouver store originally opened in 2007, and it is being enlarged to almost 188,000 square feet by annexing adjacent space formerly occupied by a sports retailer. Many departments will be expanded, with about 80% of the existing store to be renovated. Approximately 80 new positions will be added as a result of the expansion. The store’s women’s leather goods and footwear departments will triple in size, while jewellery will expand by about 50%. The store will feature a new Beauty Lab, Nail Bar and Style Studio in its expanded ground-floor beauty hall.

A new Chanel flagship boutique is currently under construction on the store’s ground floor.

Interestingly, Vancouver’s first freestanding Chanel location opened in 1991 on Burrard Street (now occupied by Coach Burrard Flagship). Several years later Chanel relocated to a 5,000 square foot two level free-standing boutique on West Hastings Street, which closed in the summer of 2010 due to brand’s sustainability and environment concerns, and Chanel decided to open their brand-owned store (concession) within Holt Renfrew to save more costs.

Other luxury shop-in-store leased boutiques set to relocate and expand include Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., David Yurman, Gucci, Prada, Christian Dior, Tom Ford, mii miu and Fendi. The new Fendi boutique will replace Chanel on the store’s third floor with a concession that will feature women’s ready-to-wear and furs. Tom Ford and miu miu are two brand-owned boutiques who first enter Vancouver’s luxury retail market, and Tom Ford will be the first Canadian brand-owned boutique.

Apparently, despite the big renovation for Holt Renfrew itself due to increasing competition such as the new Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus Vancouver store would be opened within next fe years, there is a tendency that many luxury brands are willing to open their boutique within the luxury department store, which is the idea of “concession”, in other words concession means the brand-owned, brand-operated leased boutique within one department store. From my point of view, this is an obvious progressive strategy for these high-end brands to become more “green'”, cost-saving and the most important thing is becoming more sustainable to operates their stores as concessions instead of non environmentally-friendly free standing boutiques outside.

Italian luxury brand Prada has opened its 8,200 square foot North American flagship boutique in Vancouver “Luxury Zone” – Alberni Street. It’s the latest luxury brand to open in the city’s burgeoning “Luxury Zone”.

Prada Vancouver Flagship on Alberni Street

The Prada Vancouver flagship is the second free-standing boutique in Canada, following its Toronto Bloor Street flagship which opened in 1997. And this is the fourth Prada authorized boutique in Vancouver, followed by other three Prada-owned concessions located in Holts Vancouver. Specifically, Prada operates several concessions in Canada, all located within Holt Renfrew stores in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. Vancouver’s Holt’s boasts Canada’s only Prada men’s shop-in-store concession, and its new Yorkdale concession spans an impressive 3,000 square feet with its own mall entrance. Prada recently re-opened its Montreal Holt Renfrew concession, showcasing the brand’s bright new store design featuring black-and-white checkered flooring.

Prada Holts Vancouver Concessions (Accessory Boutique and Womenswear Boutique)

Prada Toronto Free-standing boutique and Holts Yorkdale Concession

The new Prada free-standing boutique locates in the corner retail space of The Carlyle, a luxury complex at the southeast corner of Alberni Street and Thurlow Street, and it locates next to upscale brands’ free-standing boutiques such as Tory Burch, De Beers, Moncler, Burberry, Versace, Brunello Cucinelli, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Tiffany, Hermes, Montblanc and Escada. As well as a number of other luxury brands which are not far away, such as Louis Vuitton Masion, Christian Dior Couture and Gucci boutique located at Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, Fendi and David Yurman concession at Holt Renfrew, Christian Louboutin and Delvaux concession at Nordstrom.

Vancouver Luxury Zone

Even though Prada has already opened three concessions at Holts Vancouver, why Prada chose to announce a bigger free-standing boutique located in Vancouver “Luxury Zone”? From my point of view, Prada’s Vancouver concessions, located within Holt Renfrew, continue to see robust sales. The city boasts a population of loyal Prada shoppers, as well as a growing number of affluent tourists. The Alberni Street retail space itself, being on a corner with high exposure, presented a desirable opportunity for Prada, at a rent substantially less than what is being paid for many of its flagships. Additionally, since many luxury fashion brands open Vancouver’s market even the whole Canada’s market in Vancouver “Luxury Zone”, apparently it is a tendency for more luxury retailers to open their free-standing boutiques there, especially brand like Prada who already has a successful market in Vancouver through opening brand-owned concessions within high-end department store.

However, about a dozen animal rights activists gathered outside Prada’s flagship store in Vancouver on the opening day, March 11, to protest the company’s treatment of ostriches.

Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) lined up outside the store at Thurlow and Alberni, and hauled a life-size ostrich replica to the protest outside the store’s grand opening. The objective for PETA to do that is to ask Prada to drop exotic skins completely. From their point of view, it’s the 21st century and people can choose to be cruel or kind, and there are so many luxurious, high-end vegan textiles that there is no reason to use real animals, like a live ostrich, to turn into fabric.

Apparently, how to strike a balance between high-end fashion and sustainability is increasingly disturbing. This is a long way for high-end retailer to think and conduct a better way for their customers.

According to the tendency that many fast fashion brands seeking maximized profits without considering to meet high standard of ethics and social responsibility, especially the recent accident happened in 2013 for Canadian fast fashion brand- Joe Fresh, here are my insights.

The most important point is that it may be immoral for fast fashion retailers form the West to locate their factories in low wage undeveloped countries where labors must work in a laborious environment for a long time everyday with quite limited wages. Since the philosophy of fast fashion brands is producing fancy, modern and economical clothes with a speedy inspiration to capture the latest world’s fashion tendency, it is generally recognized that fast fashion should seek places with low cost and large number of labor to cater to the need of fast-paced production. Nevertheless, many corporates neglect their social responsibilities when they administrate staffs; for instance, to manufacture cheap textiles with a high speed, Joe Fresh ignored to protect workers’ human rights. More precisely, it overlooked to check the basic structural integrity of building regularly; therefore, this negligence gave a rise to the collapsing and several violent fires in its factory. The ignorance of safety infrastructure renovation represents that the company did not perform well in assuming responsibilities for employees, since fast fashion retailers should have an obligation to provide an acceptable working environment for their labors. Furthermore, the tendency is that more and more customers are willing to pay higher prices for their fast fashion clothing to improve working circumstances in underdeveloped countries, and this is a persuasive evidence that corporates should shoulder their responsibilities for their employees.

Another essential point is that whether to leave the production base or continue to put more emphasis on conducting better in the role of ethics under the circumstance of recent collapsing accident in Bangladesh in 2013 has sparked much debate. More specifically, some people contemplate that low-wage textiles industry is a required incitement for underdeveloped countries trying to associate to the global economic integration of the 21^st century, while other individuals arguse that it may be cruel exploitation of impoverished and weak people, especially women and children, to invent garments for wealthy customers at quite unreasonable prices. Indisputably, numerous retailers, such as Disney, determined to leave Bangladesh due to fear of the similar disaster happening again and uncertainty of abundant legislations to safeguard their workers’ rights. However, considering the low-wage textiles industry can facilitate the development of developing countries’ economy, it is believed that pulling over market suddenly may be unprincipled.

Joe Fresh is one of the popular and successful Canadian fast fashion brands in North America fast fashion market. Joe’s business model is selling products at ultra low prices grounded on manufacturing clothes at low cost in some developing countries, for instance Bangladesh, and its image is the symbol of “Fresh”, which means bright, colorful, and playful fashion. The most significant thing happened to Joe lately is that it experienced a challenge about ethical issues in April 2013; specifically, an eight-story factory called Rana Plaza in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, that manufactured clothes for Joe Fresh collapse. The most serious problem is that 1,127 individuals were killed by this disaster, including numerous children and women. Besides people being killed by the collapsing, hundreds of workers died in several destructive fires at Bangladeshi garment factories. As many inculpable and impoverished people lost their lives, this accident is concentrated other individuals’ attention on whether western clothing brands abide by the social responsibility and treat their employees in developing countries fairly or not. Moreover, plentiful ethical questions arise through this disaster as well.

From my point of view, many fast fashion brands give priority to maximizing their profits without considering seeking to meet various social and environmental goals. In other words, these companies concentrate on an invisible hand of open and free competition to make the most of their benefits. As we know, the main philosophy of fast fashion brands is quickly manufacturing at an affordable prices. Not only the price is attractive, but also is the fashionable style of fast fashion absorbing. More specifically, the market positioning of fast fashion brands is similar to fast food, it is convenient, fast, and inexpensive. Also, one of the most important reasons why fast fashion brands are crazily popular in recent fashion industry is that fast fashion captures the most popular fashion trends presented in fashion week every season. Since the competition is increasingly stiff in fast fashion industry, the only thing many fast fashion brands care about is profits. However, many customers complain about the quality of clothes and criticize its products like garbage. It is manifest that many fast fashion brands does not conform to social responsibility of business; precisely, it may not cater to consumers’ need of product quality.

The luxury fashion goods are often produced mainly in Europe and are then shipped over around the world. A lot of packaging is often required to ensure the good remains in its premium quality, and to minimize possible defects resulted from delivery. As well, the packaging after the purchase is also quite luxurious, with hard cardboard boxes, ribbons, paper separators, decoration tissue, and paper bags. Some would rarely see reusable bags similar to the ones used by The Kooples, A.P.C., Carven, Thom Browne, Isbel Marant, Maison Margiela, and specifically, these fashion brands only use their reusable bags only in their free-standing boutiques in Europe and Greater China Area. However, North America, high-end select fashion stores, such as Holt Renfrew, Barneys, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, are more popular than free-standing boutiques. Therefore, customers can only get packaging from these select fashion department stores instead of reusable bags from “sustainable” brands.

There seems to be a correlation between the delicacy of the wrapping, the amount of materials utilized in the wrapping and the monetary value of the product purchased, and consequently, this may create a correlation between the value of the products, and the resources consumed in its cradle to grave life cycle.

In fact, with declining sales in the year of 2015, the top tier brands are looking for various strategies to maintain their leadership position as well as the value of their brand. Sustainability appears to have limited influence in this industry, due to its special philosophy that retains its livelihood. This is a result-oriented industry that uses money to create more money, where designers take source of material into consideration if it is capable of producing a unique effect or texture.

Consequently, sustainability could be a conflict within luxury fashion industry. However, with more and more fashion brands use reusable packagings, luxury fashion industry may strike a balance between sustainability and premium goods. It may be worth the time to reflect on whether the luxury industry has a sustainable future, and how it will progress under the pressure for the retail business due to changes in social norms.

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Carbon footprint, the buzzword in the advertising and sustainability, is taking the spotlight. I was curious to gain a deeper understanding of my current lifestyle, and seek for potential changes. Following the directions outline on the Carbon Footprint Calculator, I have received some quite interesting results. More steps and measures could definitely be taken in to consideration in order to make a difference; nevertheless, there are some physical limitations and boundaries that prevent people to always make the most green or most healthy choices.

As indicated below, my personal carbon footprint is half of the Canadian average. Nevertheless, I still feel quite privileged and spoiled. The world target is less than my secondary carbon footprint alone, which leads me to reflect upon my purchasing habits and choices. Reducing weekly meat consumption, and replacing that with vegetables; buying organic, locally–grown food instead of imported ones; and avoiding frequent flights during vacations are small changes that could be ameliorated and improved upon. I think internal barriers include: financial stresses, limited choices; and most importantly, the absence of conscientiousness. Organic foods are priced to be more expensive, and in less varieties. Therefore, it may not always be realistic to adopt a 100% organic diet. An external factor considered here would be peer influence, where in order to “fit in” the friend circle; one may be more prone to engage in actions, such as wasting water and regularly travelling between countries, which negatively affect one’s carbon footprint. As well, instead of making decisions on what should be done, we are often drifted into the thoughts of fulfilling personal desires and wants, prior to consider sustainability and effects on the outer environment.  Carbon footprint reduction could be traced to the smallest details, such as waking up earlier to walk to school instead of taking buses. Also, it is beneficial to do carbon footprint exercise through CF calculators to practice “thinking green”, and reflect on alternatives before making a purchase. This would gradually change one’s mindset and shape the behavior.

One thing that came to my surprise, was the high contribution of clothes purchases and decisions that were made, in regards to carbon footprint. Because I consider myself as more fashion-conscious and seeking for a chic and sleek lifestyle, I may end up purchasing clothes that were manufactured in other countries, and then transported to Canada through air, land or vessel. This has indirectly contributed to my footprint, as a sustainability life cycle generally runs from cradle to cradle. This provides implications for the business and for end users, as people generally disregard where the product is properly sourced, or the amount of energy and resource that went into the transportation. I think this is something that needs to be taken into considerations of supply chain, where the source and transportations also comes into the play, further complicating the issue.