Conscientious consumption: Ethical trend gains in luxury market

An unlikely new trend is elbowing its way into the luxury market and it’s not gem-encrusted, fur-lined or limited edition: It’s ethical. Luxury is “usually seen as being all about exploiting – taking all that’s left of resources and maximizing your profit,” said Andreas Walter Lim, the founder of Rumah, a London-based Fair Trade cashmere company. “But there’s sort of a swing now that started with the diamond industry and the question of ethical mining and then Hollywood got onto it, which always helps, and it’s spread.” Certainly, such environmentally aware Hollywood actors and rock stars as George Clooney, Daryl Hannah, Bono and the members of Radiohead have spurred the ethical trend, as have socially or ecologically engaged films like “Blood Diamond” and “An Inconvenient Truth.”Features on ethical living now regularly grace the glossy magazines from Vanity Fair to Vogue, marking the ascent of fairly traded goods and ethically produced products to the latest zenith of high fashion. An October survey by the Luxury Institute of New York found that ethics played an important factor in determining the commercial attraction of a brand. (…) In September, Louis Vuitton, the paradigm of the mass affluent luxury goods business, used an advertising campaign to associate Louis Vuitton luggage with Al Gore’s Climate Project and Mikhail Gorbachev’s charity, Green Cross International, making donations to both organizations. “The luxury market is starting to realize the fact that there is a market for Fair Trade and ethically produced goods and that there is a demand,” said Clare Harris, the managing editor of New Consumer magazine, a British publication dedicated to ethical living. “And on the other side the traditional ethical markets are starting to see that what they produce can be luxury and can be desirable.” Image source: Fifi Bijoux / iht.com. > Continue.

News selected by Covalence | Country: Global | Company: Louis Vuitton, Fifi Bijoux, Booja Booja, Edun | Source: International Herald Tribune