Sustainable Luxury Fashion: The Entrepreneurs’ Vision

Luxury depends on cultural, economic or regional contexts. This transforms luxury into an ambiguous concept (Low, undated). Godart and Seong (Sustainability luxury: managing social and environmental performance in iconic brands. Greenleaf Publishing, Sheffield, p 12, 2014) show us that the relationship between luxury and fashion is quite an ambiguous one, as fashion does not fully belong to the luxury world, but overlaps with luxury in its most expensive and exclusive segments. On one hand, sustainability within fashion means that the development and use of something or process are not harmful to people or the planet, and once put into action, such thing or process can enhance the well-being of those people who interact with it, and the environment it is developed and used within. One other hand, sustainable luxury would not only be the vehicle for more respect for the environment and social development, but it will also be synonym of culture, art and innovation of different nationalities, maintaining the legacy of local craftsmanship (Gardetti in Conference dictated at the seminar sustainable luxury and design within the framework of the MBA of IE. Instituto de Empresa, Madrid, 2011). This chapter shows the results and analysis of a study conducted with fifteen entrepreneurs of different nationalities with sustainable projects in the luxury fashion and fashion accessory sector. All these entrepreneurs participated in the IE Award for Sustainability in the Premium and Luxury Sectors. Some of them won in the category “fashion and accessories” and others reached the final stages of the award. The purpose of this study is not only to get to know what entrepreneurs understand by sustainable luxury and, particularly sustainable luxury fashion, but also to learn their vision about the future of this sector. The methodology used was a survey with closed and open questions. These surveys also included semi-structured interviews.