Sustainability in Luxury: Reinventing Collaboration
Brand collaborations that centre around sustainability can deliver strong commercial benefits and have proven themselves to be a driving force for a better luxury industry for all involved. Licensing agreements between brands can also accelerate better shopping practices amongst consumers too, ultimately increasing the pool of conscious customers. After all, 42% of U.S and UK consumers say products that use sustainable materials are important in their purchasing decisions.
Moreover, there’s something rather humbling about tackling a challenge as big as climate through collaboration - especially within an industry that has carried around the stigma of being purely driven by financial gain. It’s certainly encouraging to witness brand extensions in the form of collaborative efforts, especially when they lead to the permanent implantation of environmentally friendly practices and sustainability. Licensing agents are beginning to seek out partnerships based on greener foundations, and given the cultural shift amongst consumers towards a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, sustainable practices within the luxury industry are fostering higher brand exposure as a result.
Take the French luxury group Kering for example - a group at the forefront of maintaining sustainability within its distribution channels. They make a point of spreading this approach to the luxury retail brands underneath their umbrella, with the group’s houses preserving the heritage of their local communities by offering training programs on craftsmanship skills and traditions. Telling examples within the group are Brioni’s Scuola di Alta Sartoria, Bottega Veneta’s Scuola dei Maestri Pellettieri and Gucci’s Alta Scuola de Pelletteria.
The group's active participation in global industry initiatives has strengthened its partnership with the aforementioned prestigious schools and universities as part of their CSR responsibilities. That being said, Kering have also been taking steps to reduce its environmental footprint to preserve the planet and its natural resources. In the name of collaborative licensing partnerships for the greater good of the earth, in 2018, Kering began to implement the use of the first 100% traceable organic cotton. This came about when the Italian textile maker Albini Group partnered with the scientific traceability company Oritain to produce what it claims is the first 100% traceable Supima organic cotton, which went on to be used in many of the brands that fall under the Kering umbrella.
Sustainable brand collaborations can also be a great opportunity for knowledge-sharing between businesses. Combining the expertise of smaller pioneering brands with the size and platform of larger businesses can catapult better practices and produce effective cases of brand extension and brand exposure. The Elvis & Kresse x Burberry collaboration is a prime example of this; Elvis & Kresse have been pioneers in luxury accessories made from rescued materials since 2006. Beginning with products made from rescued fire hoses from London’s fire brigade, the brand is now responsible for saving 100% of these materials from going to landfill every year.
In 2017, they launched a five year partnership with Burberry, which will see at least 120 tonnes of leather offcuts produced each year being saved and used for a range of luxury products, made with Elvis & Kresse’s trademarked patchwork technique. This goes to show that what initially began as a humble project to rescue London’s fire hoses has now grown into a scalable ‘textile rescue’ business that has transformed how one of the industry’s oldest fashion houses thinks about its approach to waste materials.
All in all, a sustainable luxury industry is certainly unraveling, with its feet firmly planted in the roots of collaborative efforts and innovative licensing agreements. Licensing agents are seeing the facetious planetary incentives of encouraging sustainable collaboration between brands. As the luxury industry looks ahead, it is clear to see that many within the sphere are strongly considering how they can work with those around them, rather than aggressively competing over market share and placing the bottom line at the top of their list of priorities. Now more than ever, brands are looking to take on some serious sustainability challenges together, and it is encouraging to see how a shared goal for sustainable practices has moulded new principles around the nature of collaboration.
