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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2022
Luxury Studies: The In Pursuit of Luxury Journal - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2022
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2022
- Editorial
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Editorial
More LessEach of the authors addresses the meaning of luxury considering such aspects as craft and expertise, branding and the role of the consumer in shaping the way luxury is defined. Luxury brands must manage their images and the increasing democratization of luxury presents a challenge. Sustainability has become an important part of luxury discourse and brands see a possibility to cast themselves in a positive light by adopting sustainable practices. The reader gains knowledge of strategies undertaken by luxury conglomerates and brands and insight into the practices and convictions of renowned milliner Stephen Jones.
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- Foreword
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What makes luxury goods good?
More LessIn this foreword to Luxury Studies: The In Pursuit of Luxury Journal, Gjoko Muratovski addresses the following questions: What do people expect from luxury brands right now? How is this market changing? What motivates people to buy luxury goods? What is the relationship between luxury and sustainability? And finally, are luxury goods good?
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- Articles
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Luxury leather goods and alternative leather: Risk and growth opportunities
By Luca SolcaThe global luxury market faces challenges from multiple sources. The landscape has changed with a shift towards more online selling. While this helped the luxury goods sector during the pandemic it also exposed consumers to more choices, allowing them to discover new brands and exposing them to competitive pricing. Shifts in consumer attitudes around sustainability and ethical consumption can have an impact on the desirability of products, particularly leather goods. As luxury brands rely so heavily on leather goods this can put them at a disadvantage as consumers delve deeper into the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) performance of luxury brands. A shift to alternative raw materials is underway and this will offset risks, benefitting the larger groups.
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The imaginary of luxury
Authors: Frédéric Monneyron and Patrick MathieuIn this short article, Patrick Mathieu and Frédéric Monneyron offer a new analysis of luxury they have developed in their noted book, L’Imaginaire du luxe (Imago, 2015). Their study is grounded on the idea that luxury is always a way of keeping death away and that luxury is a matter of images more than objects. Calling on the works of two major French anthropologists, Gilbert Durand and Georges Dumézil, they consequently identify on the one hand the main trends of luxury, conspicuousness, elegance and comfort and their growing importance in today’s societies and, on the other hand, they stress the importance of luxury brands and their place in the luxury market.
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Arc’teryx and the luxury of disruption: Sustainable drivers of a fashionable brand
More LessIn Canada we struggle to recognize homegrown fashion talent, and our benchmarks for identifying quality work are based on imported luxury brands. Paradoxically, however, where we are most successful is when we are at our most Canadian. The Arc’teryx label, for example. This brand that grew from a passion for rock climbing, and whose gear subsequently expanded into luxury athleisure, has a uniquely Canadian DNA, one that actively engages with the natural world, the elements, and whose design and manufacturing directives are guided by a deep respect for sustainable principles. The goal of this research is to examine Arc’teryx to see how a successful fashion label has chosen to incorporate sustainable principles into their daily operations. The methodology for this article draws upon interviews with a key company employee, and it also examines the manufacturing model employed by Arc’teryx and how the fundamental corporate ethos drives decision-making. Theory for this article is adapted from technology and social critic Ursula Franklin’s prescient 1989 Massey College (University of Toronto) lecture series (‘The Real World of Technology’) wherein she examined the social shifts that were being catalysed by ascendant technology. Historically, Canada has been a locus of colonial imports and of raw resource export; perhaps now, the cultural values of Canada can constitute another valuable export commodity. One that is sorely needed as the fashion industry as a whole – in its current structure and practices – is massively destructive to the environment and the workers who manufacture our fashionable luxuries. For Arc’teryx, there may not be the same cachet of status-based cosseted luxury or aspirational identification with a rarefied clientele that a European haute-couture fashionable item carries. Conversely, this brand may illustrate that there is more to the ontology of luxury than just the narrow parameters of the Faubourg Saint Honoré or 5th Avenue. For Arc’teryx it is more about an athletic, holistic aesthetic, one that espouses the ‘luxury’ of a strong, healthy body that actively engages with a pristine, natural environment. Worthwhile aspirations that can have much wider implications when applied to a business model.
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Humanistic luxury: The illusionary vehicle for change-making
More LessThe financial crisis of 2008 had pushed for the internalization of luxury and promoted a new wave of brands pioneering intrinsic values over opulent goods and services. Sitting in the peculiar intersection of humanism and luxury, humanistic luxury is a novel subcategory of ethical consumerism, one that combines social development and materially derived prestige. With a promise to preserve dying arts and crafts and uplift impoverished but deserving artisans, a new form of inconspicuous prestige consumption was born. This novel badge of honour, however, also introduced unprecedented considerations to the global social fabric. Humanistic luxury, an oxymoron that is too often overlooked, may help eliminate artisan vulnerability, but it also cements social hierarchies confirming who is ‘worthy’ and who is not, ultimately hindering social mobility on both local and global levels. Based on fourteen deep interviews conducted with humanistic luxury consumers across eleven countries, this article is tracing the origins of this new segment, exploring the social dynamics that set it in motion, outlining its social impacts and guiding academics to further research and industry professionals to a critical understanding of development and commerce. Humanistic luxury, as the findings of the research demonstrate, is a synthesis that arises from two oppositional ideas and serves as a reconciliation between haves and have-nots, ultimately providing a compromise between social sensitivity and vanity-driven status-seeking, affixing the same social hierarchy and related beliefs they already possess. While this symbolic segment yields consumers with the agency to improve the life of vulnerable populations, it ultimately fails to deliver on its promise of creating an egalitarian society, as it exclusively works with the ‘distant other’, maintaining local and global social order and the access to resources, as we know it.
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- Interview
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Craftsmanship: Interview with Stephen Jones, milliner
More LessAs part of the In Pursuit of Luxury podcast series, I’ve interviewed a number of people in a variety of areas in the luxury sector whose work involves areas ranging from design to business, manufacturing, publishing, sustainability and PR. I’ve interviewed designers and craftspersons and those who are involved in leadership roles in major corporations. In our pursuit of luxury and the subsequent launch of the In Pursuit of Luxury podcast we continue the debate around luxury. What is luxury? How is it defined? Who defines it? And why define it at all? These questions, and more are at the forefront of our mind as we discuss current and emergent definitions of luxury and that they mean to each of our interviewees. I have interviewed master craftsmen like for example, the watchmaker, Roger W. Smith, the jeweller Theo Fennell, the designer Ron Arad and the Michelin star chef Ollie Dabbous. I thought milliner Stephen Jones’s interview would be particularly suited for this issue as he celebrates 25 years as creative director at Christian Dior.
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- Book Review
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Rethinking Luxury Fashion: The Role of Cultural Intelligence in Creative Strategy, Thomaï Serdari (2020)
More LessReview of: Rethinking Luxury Fashion: The Role of Cultural Intelligence in Creative Strategy, Thomaï Serdari (2020)
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 191 pp.,
ISBN 13 978-3-03045-300-8, h/bk, $57.06
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