Luxury retail and eco-ethics aren’t an obvious match made in heaven. Take this summer’s revelations regarding British fashion giant Burberry’s decimation of £28.6m ($37.6m) of product to ‘protect the brand’. It’s a practice, although notably not exclusive to Burberry, that was only redressed following damning media coverage and which simultaneously flies in the face of statistics showing that almost 20% of millennial luxury spenders always take ethics into account. The ‘always’ confirms a sizeable opportunity for those tenacious, visionary and principled enough to take up the challenge.
Ethical-luxe NY fashion label Maiyet is about to do just that with the launch of a landmark part time concept store: The Maiyet Collective, which will be housed within The Conduit – a new social ethics focused member’s club in London’s prestigious Mayfair district. A beacon for design, commerce and wider discourse including politics and entrepreneurship with a positive social purpose, it will stretch the muscles of Maiyet’s ethical raison d’être to the limit, reframing physical retailing in the process ; like a niche focus department store, from the brands (ready-to-wear fashion, homewares, fine jewelry, beauty and accessories) to the décor to the discussion to the culinary manifesto, every aspect will hold a sustainable bent. In fact, it’s so committed to the cause that to keep the spotlight full beam on the wider mission the one thing it won’t be doing is selling its own label product.
To read the full article, visit Forbes.