Luxury World: The Past, Present and Future of Luxury Brands

by Tungate, Mark

  Green concerns are central to the Six Senses positioning. For example, it builds a carbon-offsetting scheme into the price of its vacations. The sun, the wind and the sea provide power. At Soneva Fushi, even the air conditioning comes courtesy of naturally cold seawater piped in from the ocean. ‘Soneva Fushi is one of the most luxurious resorts in the world and it’s zero carbon,’ says Shivdasani proudly. His next goal is to ‘decarbonize’ all his resorts through ‘oversupply of clean, renewable energy and carbon offsets of unavoidable emissions’. ‘This means that rather than leaving a small footprint on the land that we develop, we will in fact be erasing the footprints and the damage caused by others.’

  At the Soneva Kiri resort on the Thai island of Koh Kood, Six Senses commissioned the construction an ‘eco-villa’ as a showcase for its philosophy and a template for the future. Thai craftsmen built the entire structure. As the manufacture of concrete contributes to carbon emissions, none was used in the project. Instead, the foundations were made from sandstone boulders excavated at the site. A local boat builder handmade the dowels that secured the villa’s post and beams, some of which were made from driftwood. Others were sourced from local plantations. The interior walls were made from adobe mud bricks. The ‘green roof’ is a garden, as if the little round building has sprouted hair. Recycled egg crates were used in the drainage layer of the roof, while soda water bottles were used as glass bricks for the shower. ‘Non-toxic’ adhesive and wood treatments were used throughout. Wireless technology has been banished. The building is ‘therefore entirely suited to guests suffering from allergies or sensitive to electro-magnetic fields’.

  It’s interesting to note that developments regarded as luxuries not so long ago – mobile communications and the ability to keep in touch wirelessly – are now portrayed as intrusive and undesirable. Shivdasani would say that this is one of the differences between conventional luxury and the new ‘intelligent luxury’ of which Six Senses is a purveyor.

  Shivdasani admits that he is partially motivated by business, as it seems certain that more travellers will demand ‘eco-friendly’ vacations. But he adds that he is genuinely concerned about the future of the planet. After all, he lives in the Maldives. ‘Climate change becomes personal when your home may be underwater in a few years’ time.’

  Conclusion: The rehabilitation of luxury

  * * *

  ‘Cultivated people appreciate luxury.’

  Inevitably, the sports car caught my eye. Flame orange, built of carbon fibre, the Tesla Roadster costs €84,000 and can accelerate from 0–100 km/h in 3.9 seconds. It is powered entirely by electricity. As I’ve already mentioned, I don’t own a car right now. But the Tesla had such boyish charm that it made my palms itch.

  It was only one of the items on show at the 1.618 Sustainable Luxury Fair, held at the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art space in Paris. The event was backed by the WFF (the World Wide Fund for Nature) and the French Ministry of Culture. The figures in the name are the so-called Golden Number, representing perfect balance in nature. The three-day fair showcased high-end yet eco-friendly products from the worlds of hospitality, design, furniture, automotive, jewellery, technology and cosmetics. When you walked in, the air was filled with busy rainforest sounds, an ambient sigh of music and a distant pattering of water; projections of jungle foliage and waterfalls chased across the walls. Strolling around, I lingered by the sleek Alter catamaran in polished mahogany – ‘a material with an unlimited lifespan’ – and a line of jewellery called JEL (Jewellery Ethical Luxury), made from gold that is either recycled or mined using traditional techniques. There was even a travel organization called Ecoluxury.

  The word ‘luxury’ has so many potential meanings – and can be adapted to such a wide variety of circumstances – that it flexes easily with the times. Right now, conspicuous consumption is out of fashion. The logo-driven excess of the past decade is being looked upon – at least in the Western world – with distaste. And so luxury is showing us a gentler, more discreet face. Quality has become a watchword again. Authenticity is all the rage. A rehabilitation process has begun.

  How will this affect the evolution of luxury? By combining some of the strands running through this book with advice from various experts, I’ve detected five trends that may have a bearing on the luxury sector over the next few years.

  TREASURING

  ‘Emilie is more interested in embroidery than marketing,’ wrote a friend of mine on her Facebook status update recently. When I remarked on this a few days later, she told me that she was not entirely joking. Emilie is a nightmare to go shopping with: she scrutinizes every item of clothing like a forensic scientist, tugging at it to see what gives. Now she refuses to buy expensive pieces unless they show some form of creativity beyond the advertising campaigns that have made them ‘desirable’ – hence her enthusiasm for embroidery. ‘I want to buy things that I will treasure.’

  ‘Treasuring’ is in vogue. There is a renewed appreciation of the handmade. Craft is respected. At the Milan Design Fair in 2009, Italian brand Fendi teamed up with the organizers of the Design Miami exhibitions and invited designers to create what they called ‘Craft Punk’. Participants were invited to work ‘low-tech design magic’ on discarded materials from Fendi’s production process: leather, fabrics, plastic decorative elements and metal. Visitors could watch the live creation of sculptures and installations – such as animal figures made from scrap leather and wire. Embroidery, collage and old-fashioned printing techniques were also on show. As the design blog Unbeige commented, that’s what you get when ‘you mix design, innovation [and] a shaky global economy’ (‘Design Miami teams with Fendi for Craft Punk in Milan’, 14 April 2009).

  Only in that climate, too, would we have seen the creation of the Authentic Luxury Association, set up by individuals from the worlds of environmental concern, luxury branding and design. ‘Luxury must be something meaningful and lasting. It is our conviction that superior social and environmental performance is becoming a defining aspect of elite design, quality and consumer experience. It is our conviction that luxury can lead, not lag, in the transition to a fair and sustainable world’ (www.authenticluxuryfoundation.org).

  While the ALA feels quite new, the trend is a throwback to our grandparents’ version of luxury. I keep thinking about the watch brand whose advertisements read: ‘You never actually own a Patek Philippe – you merely look after it for the next generation.’ On a darker note, I was haunted by the image of the Jewish refugees boarding the Red Star Line steamers at Antwerp, bound for New York with diamonds sewn into the lining of their clothes. Some items are worth treasuring, even in the most extreme circumstances.

  SOCIAL LUXURY

  At quite an early point in your life – around about school age – you realize that society is riddled with cliques. If you’re not in the right one, you’re simply not in. The English, with their class obsession, know this very well. But class snobbery exists in France, too, despite its claim to equality and fraternity.

  The moment you arrive at a restaurant in Paris, a snap judgement is made. It could be based on your clothing, your posture or on the way you talk – often it’s made before you’ve even shown up, based on your accent on the phone. In any case, the pigeonhole your greeter mentally puts you in has an immediate impact on the position of your table. If you’re unlucky, you may find yourself beside the toilets, or the swinging kitchen door, or in some annexe away from the buzzing salon. And this being Paris, the restaurant is a metaphor for the whole of French society.

  The secret, I’ve discovered, is to visit the same restaurant regularly. After a while, the waiters recognize you. With every visit, you move up a rank. Everything is based on personal contact. The same is true of receiving invitations to gallery openings or getting on the guest lists of nightclubs. All cities work this way. Without the right connections, you can feel like Woody Allen in the film Stardust Memories: Woody is sitting on a gloomy train, the carriage filled with gr
otesque and miserable passengers. Outside, another train passes. In the brightly lit carriage opposite, beautiful people are drinking champagne and laughing. Woody stares bitterly as the glamorous train speeds on, leaving him sitting in the murk.

  But there is a remedy to this situation. When I spoke to concierge services, they set great store by the fact that they had excellent contacts. You may not be able to snag a table at that hot restaurant, or get invited to an exclusive party at the Cannes Film Festival – but they can get you in because they know the right people.

  I believe this kind of service will become increasingly desirable. Wealthy aspirants are aware that ‘status’ is about more than just logos. After all, anybody can buy an expensive handbag – but what use is it when you’re freezing in line outside a club instead of sipping cocktails in the VIP area? Not only that, but the circles of power have become less visible. The elite are not who they used to be. They are not politicians or bankers – they are stylists and gallery owners, restaurateurs and DJs. The rules of entry are vague and breaking in is much harder.

  Some luxury automobile brands – Lexus, for one – already sell concierge services with their cars. Other luxury brands will soon offer access to elite social networking assistance when customers spend a certain amount. The status object as a ticket to social status: it’s not just what you buy, it’s who you buy.

  ANALOGUE SNOBBERY

  The world is becoming digital. Pretty soon, like the fabricated universe depicted in The Matrix, it will be composed entirely of zeros and ones. That’s a pretty alarming thought – but it only partly explains analogue snobbery. The other explanation is that technology is becoming common, and thus inexpensive. Objects from the analogue era are growing rare – treasured, even.

  Evidence of this trend is all around us. You go over to your hip friend’s apartment and he puts a crackly vinyl disc on his record player. Nearby, a collection of albums lovingly hunted down on eBay – of course, he tells you that he never stopped buying vinyl – sits proudly on display. Similarly, when I was at a party the other day, a self-consciously ‘cool’ girl took my picture on a battered analogue camera. ‘It’s getting harder and harder to find the film,’ she sighed. Dali was right when he said that what is unfashionable today becomes fashionable tomorrow.

  Newspapers will become the next icons of analogue snobbery. Everyone accepts that news has migrated online and that printed newspapers are facing extinction. Those that survive will become more expensive, and they will adopt some of the attitudes of luxury brands. They will distance themselves from the web by saying that their cultivated readers appreciate the time it takes to peruse a well-written article. They will portray their journalists as wordsmiths – craftsmen. They will tell you that they use traditional printing techniques and paper from sustainable forests. And so on. Many magazines have already taken this route, positioning themselves as glossy coffee table publications.

  With the arrival of electronic reading devices like the Kindle, books are next on the list. The other day, when a friend arrived late at a cafe where we had arranged to meet, he picked up the hardback book I was reading. He ran a palm appreciatively over its cover and peeked inside to look at the endpapers and the binding. ‘It’s rather beautiful,’ he said. It was a gift. A hardback book is a luxury item.

  DISRUPTION FROM ASIA

  An acquaintance of mine works for an event organizer. Not so long ago, her company organized a seminar for the employees of a large French luxury brand. My friend sat in on the event. At a certain moment, the marketing director showed PowerPoint images of all the advertising campaigns being run by the brand’s rivals. My friend thought the marketing director would then unveil an innovative new marketing strategy that would blow his competitors out of the water. Instead, to her dismay, he said: ‘This is the direction the luxury industry is moving in at the moment. And we should be going the same way.’

  Most big luxury brands are risk-averse. Their slowness to embrace the internet is another example of their disinclination to explore new terrain. But risk taking is necessary if innovation is to occur. You may be familiar with the theory of disruption, devised by Jean-Marie Dru of the advertising agency TBWA. Disruption is a three-stage process that enables brands to innovate. First, you examine the conventions that bind your sector. Then, you challenge yourself to overturn those conventions. The result is an original vision – one that allows your brand to stand out.

  Arguably, the last disruption of the luxury sector took place in the 1990s, when venerable companies like Louis Vuitton began transforming themselves into instant-gratification fashion brands. Now they are busy trying to dissociate themselves from that image, but it feels more like communications gloss than genuine creativity. The trend forecaster Genevieve Flaven speaks of a ‘creative crunch’, suggesting that the new generation of designers are not attracted to the luxury titans. ‘In the past, talented designers were happy to find themselves designing the latest “it” bag. But now they’ve grown disenchanted with that world.’

  If the luxury giants have become sluggish and predictable, there are opportunities for others. Nokia cleverly filled a niche with Vertu, its luxury mobile phone. There is a similar Chinese brand called Veva, launched in May 2008 by Qiao Xing Mobile. The slender Veva phones come in gold-plated and crystal-studded versions.

  A Chinese luxury brand – that’s a pretty disruptive concept. The convention is that Asian markets are consumers rather than producers of luxury goods. But what if a new wave of luxury brands were about to emerge from Asia?

  In fact, Asia has a history of bringing disruptive ideas to the luxury market. The group of avant-garde Japanese fashion designers that rose to prominence in the 1980s included Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and Comme des Garçons, launched by Rei Kawakubo in 1973. Not only is Kawakubo one of the world’s most visionary designers, she has also mentored younger names like Junya Watanabe and Tao Kurihara. Kawakubo’s Dover Street Market concept store in London (in which other designers are invited to set up ‘creative spaces’), her temporary ‘guerrilla’ stores around the world and her unashamedly synthetic fragrances make her brand a model of alternative luxury.

  Meanwhile, Wang Xiao Lan, owner of Taiwan’s largest publishing company, has owned prestigious French fashion house Lanvin since 2001. This brings us neatly on to Shanghai Tang, the upmarket fashion brand started in 1994 by David Tang. Based in Hong Kong and partly owned by Cartier parent group Richemont, it now has branches all over the world. It originally made tourist-friendly takes on Mao jackets and cheongsam skirts, but lately it has been channelling a more contemporary version of Chinese culture. Its chief designer, Joseph Li, has a Masters from Central Saint Martins in London – and he apprenticed under Alber Elbaz at Lanvin. He told the New Straits Times newspaper that a recent collection was inspired by ‘the current new wave of contemporary artists from China like the politically quizzical Zhu Wei and the avant-garde Cai Guo-Qiang’ (‘East and West turned inside out’, 12 April 2009).

  Another interesting Chinese brand is Qeelin, which positions itself as ‘China’s first luxury jewellery brand’ (www.queelin.com). It’s jewel-encrusted pandas may not be to everyone’s taste, but the brand has apparently been given the seal of approval by fashionistas like Marc Jacobs and Mischa Barton – and the fact that it has been stocked by trendsetting Paris concept store Colette is also a positive sign. Its designer, Dennis Chan, was educated in Hong Kong and started his career in London before returning to his home town. He describes his designs as ‘a startling fusion of distinctive Chinese design with influences of Western contemporary concepts’. The brand’s co-founder is Guillaume Brochand, a French marketing specialist who has held posts in Asia for Tag Heuer and Ebel. He writes on the website: ‘With its 5,000 years of heritage in arts and craftsmanship together with the rising interest of its people for luxury brands, Dennis Chan and I believe that China is bound to become a major world player in the luxury goods industry, as a market itself as well as a source of cre
ativity.’

  Chinese students are currently studying fashion and luxury brand management. French business school HEC runs an ‘Advanced Management Programme in Fashion and Luxury’ in association with Tsinghua University in Beijing. There are certainly many others. When it comes to innovation in the luxury market, China is the next Japan.

  GUILT-FREE LUXURY

  It’s fair to say that the word ‘luxury’ can have negative connotations. It may imply elitism or status seeking, not to mention greed. In other contexts, it might suggest idleness or dissipation. In War and Peace, Tolstoy describes how Napoleon’s entire invading army vanished into Moscow as if absorbed by the streets. They were ruined by a familiar temptation. ‘The men who had recently made up an army drained away all over this wealthy, deserted city, so richly supplied with goods and luxuries.’

  Luxury, in this interpretation, should be resisted by the pure of spirit. But the notion of ‘authentic’ luxury offers an alternative approach. It encourages a sense of moderation and taste, of saving up for the best instead of squandering on the disposable. Perhaps the dream of luxury – as Alain Ducasse suggested – speaks of a yearning for perfection, the pursuit of an ideal.

  I was particularly struck by the viewpoint of Patrizia Pressimone, director of architecture at the Paris department store Printemps. She told me: ‘Luxury is an aesthetic pleasure. It is a form of evolution, a sign that we have learned how to enjoy life beyond the basics. It is no coincidence that cultivated people appreciate luxury. If we did not crave beautiful surroundings, there would be no Venice, no Paris. But it is a mistake to assume that luxury is about possessing a gold bath with jewelled taps. Luxury is not measured in dollars – it is measured in details.’