Is Luxury Fashion Worth The Price Tag?
Whether we know it or not, marketing has been pushed in our faces ever since we’ve been in diapers. Any idea marketed well enough has the power to shift consumer demand and thinking on various topics. One of the most recent shifts for consumers has been the belief that luxury goods cost more because they’re ethically made and of better quality. In this blog article, we will be diving into the ethics behind the production of luxury fashion. The price tag on brands like Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Chanel can leave us wondering how a bag can ever be worth a month of rent. And trust me, while consumers do stand behind spending more for a well-made item (rather than purchasing cheaper quality items), the markup on luxury items still deserves a thorough investigation.
Manufacturing in Luxury Fashion
There are several levels to luxury design collections. There is couture, haute couture, resort, and ready-to-wear (RTW). For now, this article will just focus on RTW collections produced on a large scale. These collections typically run on a two-season annual pattern. The Spring & Summer collections are showcased in Fall, and the Fall & Winter are shown in Spring. These brands also release smaller projects throughout the year, which are capsule collections with limited global quantities. This is a large contrast to how the fast fashion industry operates since it releases one collection every week! To put this in perspective, luxury designer RTW collections have around 40 looks on the runway twice a year, while the fast fashion conglomerate Shein adds around 2,000 new products on their site a day.
Labor Practices In Luxury Fashion
When you look at the traditional design houses like Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel, their products are created in countries like Spain, Italy, Paris, and even in the U.S. And if you’ve ever watched a ‘How To’ YouTube video on designer bags production, then you’ve seen the craftsmanship that goes into bringing these bags to life. Design and craftsmanship skills are often passed down in small family-owned workshops, like Ranchel in Urbrique. These specialized talents, which are hard to come by, also mean they can’t produce multiple items within the day, a direct opposite to the fast fashion companies that produce large quantities daily.
Normally, the manufacturing locations in these countries give confidence that the bags are being made by workers that are getting fair pay due to these countries’ strict labor laws. A great example is California passing a fair pay for garment workers law in 2021. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case upon closer inspection for most manufacturing locations.
In 2018, the New York Times published an investigation on garment workers in Italy. They found that the workers for luxury brands were getting paid the same, or even lower, than fast fashion brands. A woman making sweaters at Max Mara that sold for $1000.00 each was only getting paid $1 for every meter of fabric she sewed. It appears that some luxury brands have decided to skip fair wages and shoot for the highest profit at the lowest possible cost. Not much different from fast fashion brands.
Composition in Luxury Fashion
Some of the most common materials found in luxury fashion products are silk, satin, genuine leather, wool, cashmere, and cotton. These materials aren’t sustainable on their own, but with luxury resellers like Fashionphile having global success, their lifecycle is extended beyond that of fast fashion garments. It’s common to find pieces composed of those materials from the 80’s or 90’s to still be in great condition.
There aren’t many luxury designer brands like Stella McCartney or TOVE who just produce sustainable items, but other large luxury designers have started adding sustainable capsule collections each season. One of the most notable sustainable collections comes from Prada when they dropped their ‘Re-Nylon’ capsule collection in 2019. The success of this collection led to the inclusion of Re-Nylon into their 2020 RTW collection.
It’s clear great things come from the luxury fashion industry. It helps ensure collections are released on a slower timeline, establishes fair labor practices and wage compensation, and the higher prices contribute to paying for sustainable materials. There is still a lot of room for growth in the luxury industry, but overall it seems like with a few minor switches the luxury fashion industry could be the leader in shifting towards an ethical fashion industry.
Written by Marilyn Uwaezuoke
Marilyn is a graduate of Miami University and is currently getting her MBA from the University of Louisville. Her interests in technology and fashion have put her on a journey dedicated to finding the intersection between the two. She believes technology can help push the fashion industry toward a green future and is excited to share her discoveries along the way.