Sustainable luxury is the new narrative

My message is that we'll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?
– Greta Thunberg

This is the message of the future generation. And the answer lies in sustainability, in caring for them. Like Greta, millennials too take a lead towards this change. The millennial millionaires are more conscious of the environmental and social impact of their purchase decisions and are more likely to buy from a brand that resonates with their own personal values. Therefore, brands which want to retain their status in the luxury market need to evolve to keep up with this growing trend towards ethical and sustainable luxury.

According to a Nielsen survey, 73% of millennials respondents were willing to spend more on a product if it comes from a sustainable or socially conscious brand. Furthermore, 81% of millennials expect the brands that they buy into to be transparent in their marketing and actively talk about their sustainability impact. Nielsen dubbed 2018 as the Year of the Influential Sustainability Consumer – nearly half of consumers say they would change their habits to reduce their impact on the environment.

Luxury is all about time. The time spent in handcrafting, tweaking with precision in transforming a product from ordinary to exquisite. It is now time to take the narrative further and bring in sustainability in this business of luxury. Small wonder, a new breed of innovative thinkers see sustainability as a driver of rather than a brake on innovation.

Designers at LVMH Moët Hennessy are heavily investing in new materials to replace plastic and improve leather tanning. This move towards sustainability cuts costs and boosts profits whilst benefiting the planet.

The Kering group, for example, which owns Gucci, Stella McCartney, and Saint Laurent, among other high-end labels, is increasing the share of its raw materials that are renewable to improve its sustainability.

Chanel banned use of exotic leather as a step towards ethical sourcing and invested in developing biodegradable plastic. Chanel decided to share its sustainability story with everyone.

Branding sustainable luxury

Once we have an idea of the new marriage between sustainability and luxury, let us now understand how a luxury brand needs to market itself to reach out to the target audience as an icon of social responsibility.

Just a word of caution to the luxury brands. If some brands try to join this bandwagon of sustainability to catch the young consumers and build their brand without genuinely implementing sustainability and environmentally-friendly models into their practice from the ground up, it will be detrimental for their reputation.

So the effort needs to be genuine and not superficial. Therefore the communication and branding has to be subtle and not over the top. The millennial millionaires are smart enough to know whether a brand is 'using' sustainability to bait them and deep inside are not socially responsible. 'How dare you?' They will shout like Greta.

If luxury brands want to win over the affluent millennials, they have to be socially responsibility and create a positive environmental impact.

One good example of branding is by Rolex. The Rolex Award for Enterprise, the company gives a large cash prize to entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 30 years for projects that are bringing about a positive environmental or cultural change. This approach towards sustainable luxury and socially conscious innovation is an innovative branding tool.

Brands can also actively campaign for bringing about a change. These campaigns, with the right intent, are great opportunities to create the right association of a luxury brand with sustainability.

Even small steps such as doing away of plastic bags and replacing them with environmentally-friendly cloth or paper or jute bags are also lauded by consumers.

Communication and branding is a subtle art when it comes to showcasing such a sensitive matters which impact our future generations. Therefore, any luxury brand, which wants to survive the test of time, needs to subtle bring in sustainability in its narrative.

The writer is a luxury commentator and author of 'The Luxe Trilogy'