Luxury and Ethics: The Words v. the Reality

At the International Herald Tribune's luxury goods conference in Moscow, Bernard Arnault, Tom Ford and others took time to extol a main virtue of being politically correct -- pleasing their customers. Arnault's rant was against counterfeiters. The ever-quotable Ford said, "Luxury is not going out of style. It needs to change its style" and urged a return to quality saying, "We need to replace hollow with deep." Laurence Graff, chairman of Graff Diamonds, said that the 2002 Kimberley agreement had rid the diamond industry of "conflict diamonds," and detailed his company's efforts in Botswana to provide jobs for locals and to conduct environmentally conscious diamond production. The message is clear: Quality, luxury and ethical should go hand-in-hand if a company wants to succeed in tomorrow's marketplace.

The World Wildlife Fund UK seems to agree.In its report, Deeper Luxury, "Quality and Style When The World Matters," it ranked 10 public luxury companies on their environmental performance and found they were average at best. Hermes, LVMH and L'Oreal all scored a C+, Tod's and Bulgari came in at the bottom of the pack with Fs. What to do? Well, the WWF-UK wants luxury managers to call them.

WWF-UK calls upon the luxury industry to bring to life a new definition of luxury, with deeper values expressed through social and environmental excellence. Their performance and progress on environmental, social and governance issues should be comprehensively measured and reported. WWF is ready to help. Contact us.

I said before that someone needs to take leadership on this issue. Maybe WWF-UK could be the right people to do it.