The names of eco luxury
What are the names of the new eco luxury? Apart from U.S. carmaker Tesla Motors and fashion designer Linda Loudermilk, they’re largely brands from foreign companies.
The World Wildlife Fund UK, a nonprofit conservation group, uncovered in a recent report that the world’s top 10 makers of luxury brands–the likes of Bulgari, Tiffany, LVMH–have less-than-stellar records on environmental and sustainable business practices. (Story here.) But in the report, it also singled out seven companies that are proving that luxury can be affordable to the eco conscious.
At a recent design conference in San Francisco, Alex Steffen, founder of Worldchanging.org, talked about “guilt-free affluence,” or the idea that you could enjoy the good life (read: having nice things) without knowing that those things came at the expense of a kid in Vietnam. To achieve that guilt-free existence, he said, people must know more about the origin of the products they buy, i.e., how and where is it made? He called that the “back story,” which is something very few companies publicly disclose today.
These are a few companies that are making their back story part of the brand.
Among the companies WWF-UK featured were Bali-based jewelry designer John Hardy, which has retail sales of an estimated $150 million annually by selling jewelry in stores like Neiman Marcus. It operates Balinese factories made of bamboo and mud brick, with roofs guarded by a thorny bougainvillea instead of razor wire to keep out thieves naturally. Employees dine on organic food raised on the factory grounds, according to the report, called Deeper Luxury.
Brazilian clothing maker Osklen is another standout for sustainable practices. It’s 2007 winter collection called “Amazon Guardians” featured clothing made of sustainable materials such as organic wool, natural latex and fish leather. The owner of the company uses proceeds to protect the local environment in Brazil. And the company expanded internationally this year, with three new stores in Tokyo and one in New York.
Of course, the WWF-UK said that it didn’t audit these companies, but pointed to the possibilities in some of their practices. “These brands demonstrate that sustainable luxury cannot be approached in a superficial way, but involves meeting challenges in sourcing, design, production, marketing, use, repair and disposal.”
Other companies that the WWF-UK featured were Mádara cosmetics from Latvia, the Portugal-based eco-tourism resort Mata de Sesimbra, Loudermilk and Silicon Valley’s Tesla Motors, maker of electric sports cars.
Finally, OSISU, a Thai company that makes recycled furniture, is bucking trends in Asia as an emblem of modern luxury. To make its funky furnishings, the company re-uses materials that would otherwise go to landfills, and it even puts on the final touches with water-based glue and other organic compounds, removing toxins from the process.
By using such care, the company’s founder hopes that people will keep its furniture forever: “We want people to keep them as art,” founder-director Singh Intrachooto said in the report.