Shopping is not complete without LIFE

[Jem Bendell]

(This article is to appear in XL Magazine February 2008)


“What are you made of?” From London to Little India, Rome to Orchard Road, we are asked that question by stars of sport and screen as they peer from billboards and magazines. The watch company TAG Heuer invites us to feel that wearing their brand provides the answer: you are made of something strong, successful, and beautiful. Look up and you can see that George Clooney now chooses Omega, along with Actresses Ivy Lee and Kym Ng, or that Scarlett Johannson wears Chopard, amongst the various fashion choices of the rich and famous.
Luxury brands sell status. They are usually the highest-priced and highest-quality item in any product or service category and provide the consumer with an elite experience or sense of prestige. Watches, jewelery, high-specification interiors, high fashion, exclusive resorts and restaurants are considered luxury items, although luxury is increasingly understood in a personal way, as an enjoyable and rare experience for a particular individual.


Many of us feel worth it – so much so that the luxury business is worth about 150 billion dollars per annum. Working closely with global celebrities and spending billions on advertising, iconic brands like Chanel, Dior, Prada and Cartier have become a global language of luxury logos, influencing what people admire and aspire to worldwide. As old ways of marking social status in Asia are declining, so a new social order defined by luxury brands is taking hold, argues Radha Chadha, author of 'The Cult of the Luxury Brand'. In today’s Asia you are what you wear, she quips.
Consequently Asia is a focus for significant sales growth. Already in Tokyo, 94% of women in their 20s own a Louis Vuitton bag. Hong Kong hosts more Gucci and Hermès stores than New York or Paris, while China’s luxury market is growing so fast that in six years it will become the world's largest. Singapore has long been a thriving market for high-end brands, due to its level of development, international airport, and consumer culture. As former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong once remarked, for Singaporeans, “life is not complete without shopping.” Explaining the meaning of shopping in the Lion City, sociologist Chua Beng Huat writes that young professionals' “deprivation from car-ownership, contextually the ultimate success symbol, has made their bodies the locus of consumption. Clothes and other body accessories have elevated status as expressions of 'success'.”


As long as luxury brands indicate that success, their sales will grow. Louis Vuitton and Chanel have doubled the size of their flagship stores in Takashimaya Shopping Centre, while Changi Airport now hosts a luxury-retailing 'island' featuring Bulgari, Cartier, Fendi and Botega outlets. There are more brand connoisseurs, illustrated by the Sincere Watch Academy already hosting dozens of events featuring professionals from the global watch industry since its launch last year. Swiss luxury firm Chopard, known for adorning the stars, even chose Singapore for the worldwide launch of its L.U.C. Crono 1 watch, in October. Luxury services are also doing well, with the St. Regis Singapore opening before Christmas and offering guests a customised chauffeur-driven Bentley and personal butler service.



While this boom continues, last year some forebearers of bust began to appear. Some leading journalists in the fashion press sounded a little jaded with luxury, with titles and headlines like “How Luxury Lost Its Luster”, “The Devil Sells Prada” and “Has Luxury's Lap Gotten Too Big?” suggesting that the corporate globalisation of luxury brands has emptied them of their meaning. Some complained that French-labelled haute couture is actually being made in China, and cost-cutting measures have led to a decline in quality. Other journalists began questioning the ethical aspects of luxury brands, encouraged by films like Blood Diamond, which dramatically showed how the trade in precious stones has fuelled bloody conflicts. Other ethical issues facing luxury goods companies include labour rights and environmental degradation throughout their supply chains, as well the trade in endangered wildlife. As the reality of climate change sinks in, so urban consumers from San Francisco to Singapore, will come to realise the scientists are saying that the average carbon footprint of their communities needs to be cut 80% by 2050. That can only be done if businesses behind the brands they buy act now. Given this challenge, what will the high status brands of tomorrow look like?
It is time to turn the question “what are you made of” onto the companies themselves, and explore what their social and environmental impacts are, and what they are doing to address them.

The recent report “Deeper Luxury” from the environmental group WWF did just that, by presenting the world's first analysis of luxury brands' social and environmental responsibilities, performance and opportunities. The ten largest, publicly-traded luxury brand-owning companies were ranked on their environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. These brands include Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, IWC, Garnier and Louis Vuitton, amongst dozens of others. The Paris-based L'Oréal Group, which owns Georgio Armani and Ralph Lauren, came top, but only with with a C+. The research found that although some large luxury firms have begun to work on this agenda, they are lagging behind many other consumer products companies, due to a range of myths that pervade the industry, such as assumptions about a lack of consumer demand for sustainable brands within emerging markets. The report chronicles growing consumer interest in the environment across Asia. In Singapore, Issy Richardson, co-founder of organic t-shirt company Belle and Dean, says that “with increasing press coverage and celebrity endorsements of green living and eco-fashion brands, attitudes are changing and an interest in green fashion seems to be surfacing”. The craze over the designer shopping bag by Anya Hindmarch, branded with the phrase “I’m NOT a plastic bag” illustrates the potential demand. In Taiwan, Hong Kong and Beijing, “public sales were abandoned... amid scenes of chaos,” reported the South China Morning Post. At the same time, the Hindmarch bag provided a reminder of the need for authenticity: “Ironically,” the paper went on, “each of the bags… was wrapped in the kind of plastic bags they are supposed to replace.” The WWF report argues for luxury brands to address social and environmental issues authentically, to offer their consumers the best ethical products and services as an essential component of “luxury”.


There are signs that the notion of “luxury” is beginning to change. In future, the highest quality product or service may be regarded as the one that generates the most benefit to all involved in its production and trade. Consumers’ knowledge of that benefit – and even the prestige they gain from it - will be central to their luxury experience. This deeper, more authentic approach to luxury will require not just more corporate responsibility, but true social and environmental excellence. Anything less might be regarded as shallow, perhaps almost as fake as the counterfeits.
Some brands are embracing this approach. Over in Bali, John Hardy is a jewellery company seeking to make beauty and luxury “a solution, not just a commodity”. This leads to some unusual approaches, such as the factory walls, made of bamboo and mud brick, being topped with thorny bougainvillea rather than razor wire. John Hardy calls them a “sustainable solution to the international problem of security”. At lunchtime, workers dine on fresh organic food raised in the factory grounds. The Singapore Exchange-listed Banyan Tree hotel group has been seeking to offer a more sustainable form of luxury since its founding. In the early 1990's Banyan Tree Bintan built villas on stilts and around existing trees and boulders to protect the virgin rainforest, and installed a biologic waste water treatment system to recycle waste water for irrigation purposes. Now the company has adopted the UN's Millenium Development goals to guide its efforts in responsible enterprise. Managing Director of Retail Operations, Claire Chiang, explains that this work “is not simply about philanthropy or monetary contributions. It is about doing good, even as companies seek profitability – a key measure of success for a business.” As part of her effort to spread responsible business, Banyan Tree became a founding member of the Singapore Compact for Corporate Social Responsibility, which now has over 170 corporate members.


The efforts of these executives remind us that the products we consume do not magically appear in the shopping malls, but rely on life, in all it forms. Pick any product and consider its history - the grazing cows, swaying trees, ingenious designers, busy labourers, calculating bankers. The cooperation of millions of people and a sustaining environment underpins all the products and services we enjoy. By embracing corporate responsibility, iconic brands could remind us of this deep connection between our things, ourselves, our communities and our planet. Life without shopping may not be complete, but more Singaporeans today realise that shopping is not complete without Life.



Dr Jem Bendell is Director of Lifeworth Consulting, Associate Professor of Sustainable Strategy, Griffith Business School, and founder of the Authentic Luxury Network (www.authenticluxury.net). He will be speaking on the future of luxury at the Singapore Compact for CSR on January 23rd (see: www.lifeworth.com/sing-luxury-csr.pdf). The WWF-UK Report “Deeper Luxury: Quality and Style when the World Matters”, is available for free at www.wwf.org.uk/deeperluxury



See XL - Extraordinary Lives, at: http://www.resultsfoundation.com/...

[Adin M Slette]

Inspiring article! Would like to invite all eco-oriented professionals to THE (eco-ethical) MARKET, at L'Organic, Dempsey Rd, May 10 to look at, maybe shop or simply get inspired by REAL LUXURY products, like biodynamic French wines, organic bedlinens, skincare, etc. Cheers & look forward to see you, Adin