A comparison of the ethical histories of two of the biggest brands in the industry
Luis Vuitton was founded by Vuitton Malletier himself in 1854. It was the beginning of a wholesome and family centric business endeavour of which the details of its history are proudly distributed, except the parts they don’t want you to know.
The first instalment of the Vuitton story holds credible to its success. Vuitton Malletier began his business with unique trunks which at the time, held a greater number of functions than other bags on the market. Its growing success meant outsiders were continually trying to replicate his work, which would lead him to instil his recognisable niche pattern ‘LV,’ to trademark the brand. Testament to his popularity, he impressively gained store space in Oxford Street, London before the start of the 20th Century.
The next part is where it gets messy, for finding research about the war time years of Luis Vuitton is incredibly difficult. Alas, there is a plausible reason for this — all records of their practices from years 1930 to 1945 were destroyed in a fire.
Alike its neighbouring countries suffering economic decline in the 1920-30’s France would be no exception. So, it is even more intriguing how during a time of severe food deficit, a luxury designer brand with a premium price tag managed to stay in business.
What we do know, is that Luis Vuitton was the only brand allowed a store in the ground floor of Hotel du Parc in Vichy, France. This is where a regime responsible for the deportation of Jews to concentration camps based a large amount of Nazi troops. Later, Henry Vuitton would receive “decoration from the Nazi backed government for his loyalty and effort in the regime.”
Over recent years there has again been speculation in the ethics of the labour and hiring choices of the brand. While these situations do not adhere to the same severity of the Vichy regime, when Luis Vuitton’s representatives are questioned about its recent choices there remains little to no response.
Although the running ambiguity of Luis Vuitton makes it difficult to evaluate and give an ethics score accurate to its historical production and business — we can conclude that much is to be heard in their silence. As the saying goes, an honest man has nothing to hide.
Gucci:
At first glance (or — an initial Google Search,) Gucci’s sixteen paged coveted PDF titled ‘Code of Ethics,’ makes the luxury brand seemingly all we have been yearning for in the quest of high fashion and an ethical set of values.
Beyond the surface, it is difficult to oversee this comment by Gucci’s CEO, Marco Bizzarri —
“I don’t think (fur) is still modern and that’s the reason why we decided not to do that. It’s a little bit outdated.”
Given the majority of the ‘Code of Ethics,’ is its’ abandoning of fur (an infamous move since this is the material and practice in which made Gucci a household name) the fashion brand is only showing us it intends only to remove fur from its products so long as it is fashionable to do so.
Meaning their motive is not ethics, but business.
Perhaps the catalyst for this so called ‘ground-breaking’ move in 2017 was the release on October 8th 2011 — A Public Letter to the Top Management of Gucci from Former Employees who resigned collectively.
This would later instigate the elaborate and non-withholding 2012 publication by Li Wang and Robin Stanley Snell,
‘A Case Study of Ethical Issue at Gucci in Shenzhen China,’ reporting key derogatively moral practices such as:
1. Employees having their own salaries deducted when an item was stolen or went missing, even though the items were insured. To date $11,111 USD has been deducted from the salaries of Gucci store employees.
2. Having to ask for permission every time they wanted to have a snack (even on break.)
3. Working overtime to sometimes double their shift hours with no compensation.
Yet, in spite of this evident negligence of authentic moral code — Gucci’s brand ambassadors and business executives were quick and curt to action. As the second part of the report outlines the potential methods of a
multi-stakeholder approach to preventing further abuse, it makes sense to presume Gucci decided to follow the prescription of ethics the study suggested, before more evidence could be generated for other whistle-blowers to further detriment the brand.
While the move by Gucci may be questionable in its innate intentions, their currently applied and proven practices of ethics makes it much better than its’ contemporary brand in this article, Luis Vuitton.
Yet as consumers, should we really be in a predicament to choose the lesser of the evils?
It is no secret that high fashion clothes are worn to indicate status. Highly regarded social status once defined by how significant a persons contribution is to mass consumerism, stemming back to the 1980’s when we had less than half of the consumption (UK based) as we do today.
With what we have already witnessed with the societal involvement and protests of climate change, it is clear that the benchmark of fashion is now shifting toward how significant a persons contribution is to an environmentally friendly world.
Witnessing how fashion houses choose to display this in their clothing will be an important declaration. But whether or not their intentions are in the right place, an even greater one.
