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.