The 2020 Luxury and Creation Summit was held on March 4 at the Intercontinental Paris Le Grand hotel. This edition highlighted “creative disruption”. Among the many debates around this theme, committed luxury was the subject of a round table which brought together Claire Domergue, director of publication of Luxus Plus, but also Nicolas Chemla, Anthropologist and consultant, author of “Luxifer », Yvon Le Henaff, President of the IAR – The French Bioeconomy Cluster. As well as Patrick Blanc, CNRS researcher, botanist and inventor of the Vegetal Wall and Bernadette Pinet Cuocq, President of the Haute École de Joaillerie (HEJ). A conference led by Patricia Martin, journalist at France Inter.
By Luxus Plus
French fashion has the particularity and the strength to let creative people work and to accept to take risks. In English, “disruption” has a negative connotation, while in French it has a positive connotation. Focus on the round table on “Committed luxury”, one of the highlights of the 2020 Luxury Summit.
The 4 speakers present for this debate had very different profiles, which made it possible to observe a diversity of points of view around engagement in the luxury sector.
According to Nicolas Chemla, anthropologist, consultant and author of the books “Luxifer” and “Monsieur Amérique”: “The sublime is when reason rocks and proportions go crazy, luxury is created to create desire and passion.” In other words, luxury products must be sublime to attract customers. Hence the priority commitment of luxury brands, that of excellence.
However, 80% of luxury customers declare that they prefer a brand that is socially responsible. Behind the proliferation of current disruptions, is it not the question of meaning, as well as the organization of the sectors which is posed to the luxury industry? Beyond new technologies, doesn’t the bioeconomy also provide answers?
Patrick Blanc, researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research, botanist and inventor of the “Vegetal Wall” expressed himself on the subject of a luxury committed to sustainable development: “Disruption can have extremely different consequences in biology , but there is always a phenomenon of evolution whatever the business sector.”
Yvon Le Henaff, president at IAR The French Bioeconomy Cluster and specialist in the bio-economy added : “In the bio-economy, there is no waste, there are only co-products.” The bio-economy represents 316 billion euros in turnover and 1.9 million jobs in France.
For her part, Claire Domergue highlighted the specificities of the different sectors in terms of engagement, in particular that of the hotel industry, which has more than 18,500 establishments in France and that of beauty, which employs 165,000 people in France and which represents more than 10 billion euros in turnover on French territory.
She notably unveiled the results of a survey carried out by Luxus Plus in partnership with the EIML among luxury professionals.
The results are very clear : beyond sustainable development, the commitment concerns 3 other fields of action : innovation, the customer experience but also the new business models themselves of luxury companies.
The publication director of Luxus Plus did not fail to recall that “committing to a business is the act of binding oneself by a promise. Commitment can therefore take on several aspects and fields of action are very broad.”
As Claire Domergue underlines, “The type of commitment of a company is never trivial. It naturally allows it to strengthen its soft power. This is why hotel groups will naturally commit to actions in favor relationship and customer experience, while beauty is often one step ahead in the field of innovation and digital.”
