Nicolas Lopez is a New York-based behavioural analyst at Canvas8. He holds a degree in political science from Columbia University. His research is driven by the relationship between the political, material, and cultural spheres. Outside of work, he can be found writing fiction and riding his bike with no hands.


People are looking for experimental, inventive ways to engage with a planet in crisis 

Eco Imagination 

People are recognising the urgency of global environmental measures 

Sustainable Solutions

While consumers have been loud over the 2020s about their preferences for sustainably sourced goods, financial distress has caused many to shy away from these commitments over recent years. Research has found that 64% of people globally feel that the cost of living is keeping them from living as sustainably as they want, leading to high levels of eco-guilt. This sentiment is concentrated among Gen Zers, among whom 51% consider their generation the least eco-conscious in practice despite higher levels of issue support than other cohorts. 

Kantar

Inflation has damaged the flexibility of even high earners. In the US, 48% of those who earn more than $100,000 annually claim they live paycheck to paycheck, demonstrating that even conventionally recession-proof areas like luxury are no longer immune to prolonged financial hardship. 

PYMNTS

As even affluent people struggle to stick to their stretched budgets amid global economic turbulence, many are turning to alternate purchasing paths to appease their ecological and budgetary concerns. Resale is a growing category for many aspiring luxury shoppers, as 30% of US Gen Zers report turning to second-hand shops to afford high-end brands. 

Business Insider

 This demonstrates a change in the venues in which aspirational shopping is happening, as luxury stores are being cut out of the experience for many young people. Luxury getaways are similarly changing as tourists turn to '

' for vacations that cater to both experiential and ecological desires. Curiously, climate change is driving some towards 'last-chance tourism', wherein they visit places that they feel won't be habitable in some decade's time, like 

Fortune

While luxury is butting up against sustainability concerns for some HNWIs, some argue that sustainability ought not to be a consumer decision at all but a series of decisions that occur at every stage of a business's operation. "I don't think we, as consumers, should be the ones paying the price for sustainability," says Diana Verde Nieto, the author of 

, a book about the future that luxury must take to survive over the coming decades. "I think that we should be free to choose, and the work should happen within the corporation." Canvas8 spoke to Verde Nieto, a leading voice in the industry and co-founder of Positive Luxury, to tap her quarter-century of experience and understand the changes coming for the luxury sector.

What inspired you to write your new book, Reimagining Luxury?

I've worked in sustainability for over 25 years, which is quite a long time. About a year and a half ago, I really felt the whole landscape start to change.

The conversations happening in this space were kind of scattered. Amid all this noise, I thought I would love to reimagine this space. 

 is not just what I have seen, lived, and experienced but also the product of interviewing 80 people, thought leaders, and industry leaders across and beyond the luxury industry. It's a collection of not just where the industry is now but how the industry is moving forward.

The biggest thing I've seen happening is that the most proactive companies in luxury have actually been ahead of the curve, and many have moved from talking about sustainability to actually being sustainable in practice. What does it mean to behave sustainably? Do you have the windows of your shops with the lights on 24/7, or do you actually change the lighting of the windows according to the season? What kind of POS do you have in your windows? Do you have tons of stuff that goes straight to the bin? It's about how you behave more sustainably, the hangers, the tags, the experiences, etc. How do you work with the local communities? How do you rewire and replant? Not only consumer-facing factors but all the stuff behind the scenes, too. That's why I decided to write this as a playbook, as something with stories, case studies, and how-to's.

Have you found that sustainability is something naturally aligned with luxury as a category?

Yes and no. This really depends on how old the consumer is, where they live, and what they're talking about. If you think about SHEIN, H&M, or any of the fast fashion brands, in light of what consumers say they want from sustainability, they should not exist. Yet, they do and are very successful. When the consumer really wants something, sustainability is something that's dropped.

We, as consumers, should not be the ones paying the price for sustainability. We should be free to choose, and the work should happen within the corporation. It's more demographically determined in luxury. Young people largely buy luxury second-hand, so they have a different relationship with the category. For them, it's more about experiences, connections, and the story of coming across an item. This is why a lot of luxury brands are investing in experiences. Prada, for example – when you go into the Prada store, you stop at the cafe and have cake and coffee, all branded with Prada. For many people, that's more important than the products themselves.

What do you think is driving the growth in resale among young people?

I think it’s primarily price-motivated, not sustainability. However, some promising developments are just one step further down the road. Trade, rather than commerce, is becoming something people are interested in, particularly in the US. There’s this app called Sibs that’s based on trade. I traded a tea party with a girl in the US in exchange for a pair of shoes because I was in the UK and could get real English tea cakes and tea. Corporations have so much stuff that they burn, give away, etc. This could be a fantastic outlet for people to have access to that sort of stuff.

How are luxury brands balancing scarcity and trying to limit production with the need to sell in volume?

It's a case of producing less. How do you produce? What are your ingredients or your materials? What happened to those suppliers and those supply chains? And how do you extend the life cycle of a particular product? How do you repair it? It's not just about making the stuff and selling it; it's about having responsibility for your entire supply chain as a producer, which is coming into play this year as legislation in the EU comes into effect.

The quality of clothing will come into play here because if you have cheap stuff that breaks all the time, you'll have to repair it. Fast fashion is a relatively new phenomenon; it has only existed since the 80s. Before that, trend cycles were longer, and people bought clothes less often. That's what's changed now. People and brands both have to learn to value what they've already got.

From a manufacturing perspective, sustainability within the supply chain and within the brand is now non-negotiable. It has to happen, from what you choose to make things with, where you make them, how you pay your people, how you transport them, making sure you're not contributing to harmful deforestation, and reinvesting or investing in regenerative agriculture. Whatever you make, you have to have people and the planet at the heart of that thinking.

I think that we need to stop talking about sustainability. For example, we stopped talking about digital marketing years ago. You only talk about digital marketing if you are 50, like me. Otherwise, if you're young, you just talk about marketing, whether it's digital or not. It's wrapped into the assumption. I think that's what we need to move towards breaking the sustainability silo and really embed sustainability into every job description on every behaviour across the entire organisation.

When people ask: 'What is sustainable luxury?' I say I don't know – I have no idea. I understand what sustainability is, but it can't exist within a silo like luxury. It has to be everywhere. This is the problem: we keep having this narrative of sustainability as a different part of business that belongs elsewhere outside of its main value proposition. It has to be baked into the everyday business.

This has been done already in other spaces. Health and safety, way back when, was not something that everyone in an organisation accounted for. It was a hygiene concern like sustainability is now, but it was siloed. Today, if someone dies in your factory, you're pretty screwed. This wasn't the case for years. We can make this change with sustainability. In the same way, you wake up in the morning and choose to get dressed; it never occurs to you not to wear clothes. We can make sustainability a huge assumption on the part of every aspect of a business.

How can experience be worth more than a purchase?

For increasingly cost-conscious consumers across the economic spectrum, luxury purchases are becoming rarer and, therefore, more meaningful. To this end, many are looking to make their rare luxury purchases a more meaningful act, using services like luxury delivery platform 

 to elevate the act of delivery above merely placing an order online. Experience is similarly driving new shifts in 

 looking to immerse HNWIs in local culture.

How can brands bake sustainability into their operations?

Far from just sourcing more sustainably or making supply chains more transparent, in the new sustainable economy, successful luxury brands are increasingly expected to make sustainability the very basis of what they do. Whether it's 

 recrafting old suitcases into new and re-focusing its storytelling on sustainability or brands like 

 tapping homegrown artisanship using traditional Thai weaving, brands are reframing what they do to be more sustainable from the ground up.

How can brands nudge consumers towards sustainable choices?

As consumers across different income levels turn to resale, luxury brands are looking for ways to encourage shoppers to make sustainable choices. Brands like 

 have implemented buyback initiatives. Apps like 

 enable consumers to trade with others for their pre-owned items, encouraging circularity entirely outside the paradigm of sale and resale.

 of people globally feel that the cost of living is keeping them from living as sustainably as they would like

 of US Gen Zers report turning to second-hand shops to afford high-end brands

of Gen Zers consider their generation the least eco-conscious in practice despite higher levels of issue support than other cohorts

Luxury brands are increasingly expected to own responsibility for their offerings, even after the point of sale – embracing repair, upcycle, and resale initiatives

As conscious shoppers become acutely aware of businesses’ eco impacts, there’s a growing consumer expectation for brands to bake sustainability into every arm of their operations

With budgetary constraints making sustainable purchasing more difficult, many people are turning to resale and trading platforms to access luxury products

Diana Verde Nieto is the co-founder of Positive Luxury, which helps companies adapt and transition to a new climate economy by assessing their ESG performance and forecasting social and environmental risks. Diana is a pioneer in ESG and a globally recognised figure in the sustainability field. She holds a degree in global leadership and public policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and she has been trained by former US Vice President Al Gore at the Alliance of Climate Protection, subsequently being honoured by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.

Global

Luxury

Sustainability

Despite growing demand for sustainable luxury, financial pressures mean many are compromising their green values. However, alternate purchasing paths offer a new frontier for eco-conscious purchasing. Canvas8 spoke to Diana Verde Nieto to understand the future of sustainability in the luxury market.