Today, Pamela Herring provides some thoughts about the luxury fashion industry.
I have always had a keen interest in the luxury market, throughout these past few months, my interest in this market has further developed into quite a passion of mine, and has quickly turned into a field that I see myself working in later in life, specifically in the lines of corporate social responsibility.
As someone who is interested in sustainability within the fashion industry, a quote that caused me to do a double take was a statement posted on vox.com, stating that “Burberry brought in $3.6 billion in revenue last year — and destroyed $36.8 million worth of its own merchandise.” (Lieber, Vox 2018) Question 1. Why? Question 2. Again… WHY?? (I hope that you feel my frustration through the screen.)
Though public outrage caused Burberry to abolish this practice, according to the article, numerous brands use this strategy and also destroy their unsold goods, too. Richemont, Nike, Louis Vuitton, Victoria’s Secret, and plenty of other well-known retailers use this same practice to “preserve [their] reputation of exclusivity”.
I do understand where these brands are coming from; if their goods are donated, they could easily be resold for less, and could cause the brand image to potentially decrease in value. However, simultaneously, these iconic, high-value companies are wasting tons of materials only to have them be shredded or burned up. It’s interesting to me that the “top of the food chain” brands are the ones that are seemingly the most wasteful, and makes me wonder what kind of unsustainable practices these brands are doing behind the scenes that perhaps aren’t known to the public.
With all of this being said, I do feel for these luxury brands and resonate with why they partake in these choices. But more so, I firmly believe that all brands have a responsibility to make the right environmental choices, which in this case would be coming up with a plan to either having some sort of second-hand system in place for their goods, or making all of their products to order. Hopefully one day I will be in a position to aid in making these choices for brands such as Burberry, and coming up with a strategy to leave a better environmental imprint within the fashion world.
Cole, Brendan. “Burberry Burns Millions of Dollars of Clothes to Stop Them from Being Sold at Discount Prices.” Newsweek, Newsweek, 19 July 2018,
www.newsweek.com/luxury-brands-prefer-burn-millions-dollars-worth-clothes-over-letting-wrong-1032088.
Jonathan Andrews Follow. “Marketing Plan for Nest Thermostats.” SlideShare, 20 Aug. 2015, www.slideshare.net/JonathanAndrews10/marketing-plan-for-nest-thermostats-51868271.
Wicker, Alden. “We Have No Idea How Bad Fashion Actually Is for the Environment.” Racked, Racked, 15 Mar. 2017, www.racked.com/2017/3/15/14842476/fashion-climate-change-environment-pollution.