Fashion Waste as Vibrant Matter. How Luxury Brands Are Taking Care of It

The contribution investigates how the two leading multinational luxury fashion goods holdings – LVMH and Kering – have introduced circular design methodologies and waste valorisation in their creative, production and distribution processes. Starting from the hypothesis that the imaginary of fashion waste is transforming from a negative element, to be hidden and eliminated, to a vibrant matter and resource to be valorised, the websites of the holding companies and fashion brands that are part of them were analysed in order to map current circular practices. Examples of the valorisation of pre- or post-consumer waste and its reintroduction into the supply chain are not rare, but until a few years ago they came exclusively from the action of emerging designers and independent brands, alternative to the fashion system, and the existing bibliography focused on these. This contribution opens up a new line of research involving global luxury brands, starting from the hypothesis that circular practices have spread from below within the fashion system through a bubble-up effect.