Why Green Is the New Gold

Pearlfisher’s Tess Wicksteed looks at the gathering of an eco luxury momentum from trade, consumer, celebrity and media routes.

AUTHOR BIO: Tess Wicksteed is strategy director at Pearlfisher New York – [email protected] www.pearlfisher.com

As we look at the global event circuit—with, for example, Luxe Pack’s debut of its “Luxe Pack In Green” installation at the end of 2010—and the more recent arrival of the eco gifting suite (offering organic spa treatments) at this year’s Oscars, the gathering of an eco luxury momentum from trade, consumer, celebrity and media routes is becoming more marked. But what does it really mean for the future of the luxury landscape and the traditional luxury beauty brands within it?

In February 2011, it was widely reported that LVMH—one of the world’s largest and most revered luxury groups—had taken over organic skin care brand NUDE. Buy-outs such as this highlight the extent of the changes taking place in the mainstream luxury sector.

Eco and sustainable credentials are now becoming integral to the luxury brand offer. Eco is desirable, but we still want luxury brands to offer a premium—and equally desirable—look and feel. Approaching “good-ness” and “green-ness” needs to be a careful balancing act for the traditional luxury beauty brands.

And this is the crux. These brands have always traded on exclusivity but today’s consumer desire is based on visibility and being more open, honest and transparent about their offer and actions. It is time for these brands to address more than their brand face and understand that being more committed, visible and inclusive should enhance rather than damage their reputation.

Luxury fragrance is still particularly coming under fire when it comes to the issues of light-weighting, excessive packaging and costly manufacturing. But at the end of last year, eight manufacturers came together to create an eco-designed box set of fragrances in order to illustrate the potential for more sustainable luxury design. The set of three fragrances—called Emoi Infini—is housed in glass bottles recycled from household waste [SGD] with a Rexam screw pump, a PET plastic cap and sustainable and lightweight cartonboard [M-real]…
Luxury brands should embrace the fact that luxury today is no longer confined and is being redefined. But it’s not just a question of mentally—or literally—swapping color allegiance from gold to green, but understanding the power of holistic brand design in building a new and iconic luxury status. All design challenges are about resolving problems, and in this respect that’s all we have to do—think differently about what luxury means, by looking at a host of new creative opportunities which can appeal to the hearts, minds and desires of the luxury consumer while addressing our changing environment.

We all know the iconic Chanel identity, but how many of us know that Chanel is committed to the French community at Grasse where its flowers are grown and harvested, and that it has signed a partnership agreement to help safeguard the tradition and quality of the Grasse expertise?

We can design out and minimize the bad, the excess or unnecessary, and design in and maximize the sustainable, the pure and the ethical. Of course it won’t happen overnight but brands—like Chanel—are already in a phenomenal place from which to source, build in and develop an appropriate ethical or sustainable interpretation. And, in this way, secure a future positioning in a new luxury world order that is more than just skin deep.