Jul 6
I've always felt that the small group of us working at championing a more sustainable form of luxury have been working in a kind of bubble which is only now beginning to scratch the surface of public conciousness. But imagine the solitude that Edward J. Urick must of found himself in when writing "Luxury and Waste of Life". A book which discusses the luxury industry and asks whether the money spent on luxury couldn't be better served by being spent on community focused projects as well as the motives related to the consumption of luxury.
But what make's this work on luxury intriguing is that it was written in 1908! I hope that this is not a statement on the fact that we will always be fighting a never ending battle.
Jul 6, 2010 at 10:16 PM Incredible! How did you find this book? I would love to read it as indeed the author must have felt quite alone at the time: the title still feels like a strong statement in 2010... Florian
Jan 20, 2011 at 5:58 PM Edward wasn't so alone. As far back as 1889, in "The Gospel of Wealth", someone as rich and famous as Andrew Carnegie wrote that the wealthy have an obligation to use their money for the public good instead of indulging significantly in life’s luxuries. That didn't keep him from building mansions. Nor does it today prevent people like Bill Gates, who do a lot of good from living very well at the same time.
It's not so much a "never ending battle" as a facet of human nature to be attracted to beautiful, well-made things. It appeals to us on an emotional level and is thus a very powerful force. But it's also not in competition with social good. Consumer of luxury products tend to be powerful people with access to money, power, knowledge -- all the elements necessary to make a difference in the world. The trick is to channel this force into something socially beneficial, using luxury's ability to get people's attention to as a way to also open their eyes.
The Timothy Han brand has made a very good start in this direction. And yet there is so much more potential! :-)
I'd be happy to come to London to talk to you about it some more.
Misha
Apr 13, 2011 at 9:57 AM We believe that the issues on how to look at luxury, are not well represented by a book the likes of which you are presenting, but should be seen under a different light.
From what we can infer from the titles of the chapters and of the book itself, the author uses an economic perspective to depict luxury as something ethically questionable - almost a sin. Luxury appears to be something that just creates waste and is therefore to be repealed, under a typical Pareto efficient approach to well being optimization of the general populace.
Unfortunately such argument does not hold against reality. Luxury in itself has existed since the dawn of humankind and it is therefore a factor embedded in human nature. For this reason, banning luxury would result in a reduction of the general populace's well being rather than in an increase of that.
Moreover we do not see a necessary link between luxury and waste. It can be argued that luxury requires higher than average craftmanship skills, time to design and manufacture, small scale production (and therefore lower productivity), expensive materials and, in general, more effort to produce than non luxury items. Nonetheless, it is not a given that such processes must result in waste of resources. On the contrary, given the rarity of materials employed, there is a big incentive in reducing the waste in the production process. The argument of lower productivity connected to luxury product is also not correct: since a luxury product, by definition, must convey a satisfaction superior to a "normal" product, the higher effort needed to produce it is compensated by the higher value it conveys.
Having stated the necessity of luxury and proved that a direct link of it to waste is misleading, we can now refocus where the debate should be headed: around how we can have luxury in our societies in the proper quantity in order to satisfy our need of it, while at same time minimizing the impact in terms of consumption of resources and labor needed to provide it.
This is a paradigmatic shift: banning something that society wants is a questionable deed, while trying to optimize it is an ethical approach to the problem.
As a result, the question should be: how can we make luxury sustainable? In our opinion there are three key areas in which companies should operate: design, procurement, recycling.
In terms of design, luxury product should embed in them the concepts of sustainable designs codified by many authors operating in the field. In particular they should use materials that can be replaced and that not deplete natural resources and should contribute to heighten the environmental consciousness of the customers that buy them.
In terms of procurement, sustainable luxury products should not exploit poverty of workers to source cheap labors, but provide fair standards of living. In terms of materials, it should help the its suppliers in minimizing their environmental impact (by checking their production process and ban the use of hazardous chemicals, improve recycling and apply techniques to minimize waste - therefore educating them too to sustainability) and ensure that the provisioning of the materials needed can be maintained indefinitely in the future.
Finally, sustainable luxury should also factor in recyclying (and upcycling, where applicable). In a world of finite resources, due to the fact that Earth is a closed system, also production and use of goods should be thought as a closed system. In other words we should replace our linear production system (cradle-to-grave) with a circular production system (cradle-to-cradle, where the waste at one end of a production system, can become the input at another end. This concept can be applied in many industries but we believe that luxury is a very suitable candidate: jewelry for example uses a limited amount of very precious raw materials, that can be recycled from previous jewellery items. Fashion can do that or (through vintage) reuse previous fashion items or upcycle other materials. In the end, luxury is not opposed to recycling - it just did not consider it yet.
In conclusion, it is good to support the idea of a more sustainable luxury. But the discussion should be framed in the terms described above and not in antagonistic fashion "luxury vs greater well being". The latter is a misrepresentation of reality and a misunderstanding of what luxury really is.
Federico, EunYoung, and Rock
Sustainable Luxury and Design MBA Module 2011
IE Business School