Hellooooo ladies. Long time no see. Literally. I have been quite busy as of late, you know softball and those shenanigans, BUT I wanted to give you all an update on my experience in Paris and some things I learned while away. Basically, I attended a conference that covered the topic of circularity being integrated by luxury brands if possible. The questions arising are is it actually attainable, how would they do this and uphold brand image, what are the effects on the supply chain, etc. As you can tell, it was really cool as I was surrounded by professors who had worked in the industry and now in academia and people who still work in the industry in areas like consulting. I was the youngest person there, so being surrounded by so much knowledge I had never heard was amazing. Every attendee basically presented their intended research for the upcoming year, and it was fascinating to say the least. Obviously, I keep up with as much as I can in the industry, but alas I am but one woman. At the round table one of the craziest things I heard about was how Burberry in 2018 was caught burning excess inventory to uphold value. Sometimes called Burn-berry. HOW CRAZY IS THAT for a brand to burn inventory, I mean this is just the dirty side of luxury that is being exposed. I'm not going to go too deep into issues of advertisement of sustainable products and the use of this terminology in Luxury, but the one thing we have noticed is that the younger consumers are more willing to see luxury brands use more recyclable/ sustainable efforts and not see a decrease in value of the luxury goods but rather love the initiative being taken by the brands. Younger consumers may even be more willing to utilize buying from resell/ refurbish/ vintage platforms as well. Meanwhile, the older consumer tends to not want to exchange real leather for vegan, for example, because it takes away from the legacy of the brand. They may see these as inferior goods and buy less if any over time. Legacy holds a ton of weight for many consumers, which I mean is of no surprise because it builds trust in the goods. You may say, julia why are you talking about this it doesn't relate to fast fashion, but my ladies, it does. One of the issues of including more circular practices into luxury is the divide between the shareholders at the top (money men) and the people producing at the bottom of the supply chain. The working conditions are not as good as provided on the websites for these brands, but this is not a new idea in the industry. Workers at the bottom of the supply chain, as Hakan Karaosman noted in his presentation after stepping and integrating into their daily lives for his study (hopefully I am correct in remembering), have solutions as to how to make the supply chain better and more efficient. I mean think if your teacher came up to you and asked for honest feedback, would you give it? no, but if it was anonymous or you had a better relationship, you may. Now, if you knew your feedback would actually be implemented because of how sincere your relationship was, you would without a doubt right? This is a common theme for workers as yes there are inspections of working conditions and so on, but why speak up when no change occurs. His bottom up strategy spoken of could provide a solution, yet in order to use this solution, financing is needed because why would shareholders/ the board of directors change something that is already providing profit? That may put them at a deficit, even though they already have enough consumers to purchase goods with the current supply chain/ business model? This is the same idea as fast fashion. As much as we say we would "never buy from brands with bad supply chains, working conditions, etc" we still do. So why would people with a plethora of funds just stop buying from luxury brands either. Now we know in terms of fast fashion and luxury this tends to stem from trade offs and opportunity costs as well as price discrimination, but in the end all initiative to be more circular hinders upon finances, as all things do. Think, if we want new products like Prada's re-nylon, we need to procure financing for R&D, advertising, suppliers and production, etc. It is costly, and again, an idea present in both fast fashion and luxury is that when you have a strong consumer base, why change? Take this information as you will, I know I missed some things I wrote in my notes from the day of the conference, so let's cross my fingers I made no error. But just something to consider when determining ethicality of brands in the future.
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