ABSTRACT

Eco-sustainable fashion engages in environment-related practices with the specific aim of reducing environmental damage during and after the production process. This chapter examines the concept of luxury, and luxury fashion in particular, and discusses the specific sustainability opportunities and challenges faced by the luxury fashion industry. Since the essence of fashion is change, luxury fashion gives exclusive access to enforced change. Luxury fashion is recurrent change at its highest level, and it is distinguished from other luxury segments by its constant pressure for change. Since luxury fashion consumers are most sensitive to such cyclical changes in style, luxury fashion faces the problem of how to pursue eco-sustainability when it distinguishes itself from the lower segments of the fashion industry by driving the mechanism of systematic, recurrent change. Some scholars have tried to tackle the sustainability challenges faced by mass market fashion segments.