Sustainable Luxury and Fashion: From Global Standardisation to Critical Customisation

The concept of luxury is often linked to fashion. Even if those two terms have obvious different meanings, they both refer—in terms of goods and expenses —to the economic and cultural field of uselessness, excess, waste. Furthermore, in these years, a new element has been introduced to this relationship: distinction. Although we live in the age of global fast-fashion, distinction means nowadays creating a personal fashion, caring for the production processes, the workers’ conditions, environmental issues and the material “history” of what one wears. In other words: sustainability. Therefore fashion becomes luxurious, not only economically, but also highlighting values such as uniqueness, customisation and wellness—the same values on which luxury is based. Fashion and luxury can thus create a new critical and ethical paradigm. This paper will focus on this new paradigm of luxury concerning fashion, the word “critical” referring above all to the concept of “choice”. One can choose his/her clothes and can distinguish his/herself by taking care of the senses, of materials, of time. The first section of this paper will analyse how the concepts of fashion and luxury were defined and differentiated by Social Sciences at the beginning of the Twentieth Century (Sombart in Luxus und Kapitalismus. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1913; Veblen in The theory of the leisure class. Macmillan, New York, 1899; Simmel in Psychologie der Mode. Die Zeit: Wiener Wochenschrift für Politik, Volkswirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Kunst 5 (54):22–24, 1895). The main aspect of this difference lies in the relationship with time of the two concepts: luxury is eternal and fashion is always changing. Then this paper will consider the critique of this “classical” differentiation operated by Fashion Theory—born in the last decades of the Twentieth Century as an autonomous field of research in Cultural Studies. The symbolic principles of modern luxury will be compared with the symbolic meaning of contemporary fast-fashion. The core of this paper is represented by the analysis on how fashion is rethinking its own patterns: from haute couture to the “fastest” brands, many fashion companies and designers are aware of ethical issues and sustainability, nowadays. Therefore sustainable luxury seems to be the only path for contemporary fashion culture and creativity. Finally, this paper will consider some examples as case studies, focusing especially on some new contemporary Italian fashion brands. One of these brands—Cangiari—will be analysed in detail as an ethical luxury brand, caring deeply for social commitment and sustainability.