Green Washing Tide After Luxury Crisis

The attitude of the world's top luxury brands to environmental protection is somewhat unpredictable. In this season's fashion week in Paris, fashion designer KarlLagerfeld has designed the Chanel brand's show scenery as a scene of global warming causing iceberg melting. Many of the "polar bear coats" and high tube boots designed by fake fur have been displayed in the clothing show. The whole show is full of environmental protection. But paradoxically, on the Fendi fashion show of Milan fashion week, the focus of KarlLagerfeld has become a special processing technology for all kinds of animal fur.

KarlLagerfeld's contradictory image of "environmental protection and non environmental protection" in the same fashion season is the epitome of the current luxury industry: many luxury brands, on the one hand, vigorously promote environmental protection in the marketing and marketing environment, launch environmental protection bags, environmental protection T-shirts and other products. On the other hand, the fundamental characteristics of raw materials and manufacturing processes used by them are frequently challenged by environmentalists.

Is the luxury brand's environmental action just a measure of pleasing consumers after the financial crisis, or is it really concerned about the environment and wants to protect the earth?

The LV, Guc-ci, Burberry and GiorgioArmani brands have not yet been answered to the questions raised by e-mail in the daily economic news a few days ago.

It has been 15 years since the establishment of luxury management MBA course, and PierreTaipie, the dean of the French ESSEC business school, who introduced the course to China, told the "daily economic news" that luxury brands are now doing environmental protection, including the two purposes of currying favor with the public, expanding the customer base and protecting the earth and reducing pollution. "Perhaps the current proportion of the purpose of expanding the customer base accounts for 80% of the total proportion. The goal of truly protecting the environment accounts for only 20% of the total, but this is a good start after all. If this continues to develop, I believe that the proportion of interests and environmental goals will be adjusted."

Luxury and environmental protection have long been "grievances".

The first contradiction between luxury and environmental protection should be the PETA (PETA), which was founded in 1980, and their entry point is to choose the luxury brands such as LV, who are good at leather goods and fur making, to make a large use of animal fur, such as beavers, mink, crocodiles and so on.

In the face of accusations by environmentalists in the material sector, the luxury industry has come up with the idea of artificial fur, which uses other materials for special treatment to achieve the visual effect of fur.

But at this time, environmentalists pointed out that raw materials such as chemicals used in artificial fur, especially artificial fur, pollute the environment very much. They believe that the fake grass grown for environmental protection is not environmentally friendly at all.

Under the planning of luxury brands, some zoologists have come out to say that 85% of the fabric in the global fur industry comes from the animals raised by humans, while raising animals and obtaining fur are part of human husbandry for thousands of years.

Moreover, the luxury industry has also increased its fur to solve the ecological problems: New Zealand has more than 80 million possums, eating 21 tons of vegetation every day, and says that if they are allowed to grow, New Zealand will become Sahara in 15 years.

However, the environmental protection organization will remind the public that the performance of LV's fashion and fur Department has increased by 10% annually. It is the sacrifice of animals such as foxes, mink, crocodiles and so on.

Green washing tide after the crisis

In recent decades, luxury goods and environmentalists have been living in this kind of "wrangle". Luxury business is booming. There are more and more participants in environmental protection. This difference means that one side must compromise, but this compromise still lacks an opportunity.

Since the beginning of 2007, the economic crisis started in Europe and the United States has spread all over the world, and this change is also reflected in the luxury market.

In 2009, global sales of luxury goods dropped by around 10% or around $218 billion, the first decline in the luxury industry in 15 years, according to Bain consultancy data.

Against this background, many luxury brands have slowed down the expansion of stores, reduced product prices, reduced advertising spending, and put more effort into emerging markets such as China. At the same time, they have shown more goodwill towards environmental protection.

In 2007, the female designer AnyaHindmarch launched the "I 1, mnotaplasticbag (I am not a plastic bag)" shopping bag, which can be regarded as the beginning of the "green washing tide" which attracted the public's attention.

AnyaHindmarch said: "if people buy this kind of bag and reuse it, it will be good for this business, with the aim of reducing the number of plastic bags we use."

Next, the designer AlexanderMcQueen designed a skull shaped earth and printed it on a scarf made of organic cotton, calling on people to buy clothes made of organic materials and low carbon emission reduction.

Last May, the parent company of LV brand, France LVMH group, announced the acquisition of an environmental brand Edun founded by U2 band member Bono and wife AliHewson.

Gucci group has also launched a series of limited edition environmental protection products since 2008.

In addition to AlexanderMcQueen's skeleton head organic cotton scarf, there are YSL brand shopping bags, Gucci designer FridaGi-annini and YSL designer StefanoPilati's environmental T-shirt, BottegaVeneta's environmental protection handbag, SergioRossi's heel, environmental protection materials and high-heeled shoes, etc. Guc-ci group says that the proceeds from these products will be donated to the non-profit ring protection organization Good-planet.

In addition to the above two groups, there are also GiorgioAr-mani to help save AIDS children in Africa, and to launch the "Ur-banZen" (City Zen) series of clothing DonnaKaran.

Almost every luxury brand, as well as Zara, H&M and other fast fashion brands, are talking about environmental protection and dyeing green.

However, in the face of this wave of "green washing" in the fashion industry, the public acceptance is not as high as the luxury brand expected.

"I don't think all the big cards are environmentally friendly, although they often display some so-called environmental protection series according to the social trend, but this does not mean they are implementing environmental protection," China's model Mo Wan Dan said publicly.

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Balance between responsibility and interests

However, in the fashion industry, not only luxury brands such as StellaMcartney and YSL have launched the series of organic cotton and linen garments, but also the popular brands such as Levi 1, s, Gap and Amer-icanApparel have started using organic materials to make ready-made garments.

But the problem is that consumers' environmental awareness seems to have failed to keep up. Consumers' choice of shopping today largely depends on the style and price of clothes.

In this regard, the fashion industry's answer is: "in fact, in the long run, buying organic clothing will save more money," said ScottMackinlayHahn, who founded the green fashion brand Loomstate with designer RoganGregory. "Every time you produce a non organic dress, the limited resources are consumed. The more you buy, the less resources you have.

Just like oil, the cost of clothing will be higher and higher, and the price of clothes will be more expensive in the future.

But there is no problem with organic fabrics. It will not raise prices because of the gradual decline of resources.

This may make consumers aware of the real role of buying environmentally-friendly clothing, rather than just a short fashion behavior, not just to buy a green suit or a green bag to follow suit.

Moreover, as organic fabrics are being accepted by more and more consumers, the cost of clothing is gradually approaching that of ordinary fabrics.

Comparing H&M with the cost of organic cotton and ordinary fabrics, it is found that the price difference between them has decreased from 100% to 20% to 30%, prompting them to plan to increase the number of organic cotton products to half of all products.

The rising trend of "slow fashion" also fueled the "green wind". When more and more consumers complained that the clothes they bought were too poor to buy three or four same clothes a year, the environmental fashion had put their clothes on the label of quality assurance for many years.

For example, Howies, an environmental fashion brand from Ireland, although the price of clothes is high, a classic tweed coat price is 400 pounds, but it has 10 years of quality assurance.