This summer two internationally recognized figures came together to raise awareness about the impending doom of our planet. Annie Leibovitz – a renowned photographer whose career has produced iconic images of Yoko Ono, John Lennon, a nude and heavily pregnant Demi Moore, and Queen Elizabeth II – paired up with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev to promote Louis Vuitton luxury goods. What better way is there to bolster the movements surrounding global warming and sustained development than through advertisements for expensive leather travel bags? Vuitton is the latest global company to brand itself as a socially and ethically responsible business via undisclosed donations to Al Gore’s The Climate Project and Gorbachev’s Green Cross International. Such pairing of consumerism with causes is nothing new; Live8 concerts draw attention to poverty, while GAP, Aldo, M.A.C., and Kenneth Cole have all established AIDS awareness initiatives.
Vuitton’s ad relies on an image of Gorbachev sitting in a car looking uncomfortably sandwiched between the Berlin Wall and a Louis Vuitton bag to convey its status as an environmentally-conscientious maker of luxury goods. It seems, however, that the history evoked by the ad – Communism and the Cold War, to name a few – overshadows both the bag and the environment. What, then, are we to take away from such ads? According to Vuitton, we are to know that “A journey brings us face to face with ourselves.” But do such vague, albeit chic, mantras and the campaigns behind them really foster a better sense of self and our place in the world, much less effectively mobilise the public into acting on environmental issues?
Former derivatives trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb would probably say not in the slightest. Taleb’s new book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable argues that generally speaking our traditional modes of thinking about the world are fundamentally flawed, to the point where we project oversimplified, narrative explanations onto events that defy straightforward explication and qualify as Black Swans, the unknown unknowns. Although Taleb largely deals with events he considers momentous and extreme, such as market crashes and 9/11, Taleb’s ideas raise similar issues about how we handle global issues, like the HIV/AIDS epidemic, global warming or poverty. How do we face up to these kinds of unpalatable truths and circumstances?
If the Louis Vuitton and numerous celebrity-driven AIDS campaigns are any indication, it seems that many people find solace in their pocketbooks. By linking causes with consumerism, the fashion industry has devised a scheme to help people ease their consciences through product purchases. By buying a Louis Vuitton bag, consumers know that they are providing indirect support for The Climate Project and Green Cross International. Similarly, GAP and Kenneth Cole sold t-shirts with AIDS awareness slogans, Aldo offered AIDS totes and empowerment tags, and M.A.C. came up with a line of VIVA Glam lip products for its AIDS fund. While a significant amount of campaign resources have been devoted to destigmatising HIV/AIDS through public service announcements, radio spots, and print and outdoor ads, it is debatable whether these fashion house initiatives really do diminish stigma and educate the public about the realities of HIV/AIDS. In looking at the impact of these campaigns we might conclude that yes, a degree of success has been attained by virtue of the fact that the AIDS campaign products are selling. Consumption would signify an increase in awareness.
Here is where Taleb’s argument would come in. Such a straightforward examination of fashion house campaigns and their impact on your average Joe is misleading because consumption is not necessarily a significant indicator of how much more meaningfully aware or educated the public is about AIDS or the environment. By promoting their causes through short, terse advertisements that actually convey very little information in them (AIDS campaigns, for example, tend to narrowly focus on unprotected sex, leaving drug use out of the dialogue), these campaigns run the danger of cultivating complacency by skirting discussion of larger, more pressing issues like structural violence. Yes, perhaps the ads do make us more aware, but we are only minimally informed. Are we providing false comfort to ourselves by buying into the notion that Louis Vuitton and Kenneth Cole can provide us with social consciences and activism consumable in apparel form?
Despite these shortcomings, it is undeniable that fashion house initiatives do make significant contributions to causes like the environment and AIDS. They do so partially because the industry has advertising know-how and understands its customer base. What is disconcerting is that their efforts should stop short of really attempting to modify our conceptions of what our responsibilities to our planet and each other are. By distilling the problems spawned by the AIDS epidemic or global warming into impossibly succinct catch phrases (“We all have AIDS”, “Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.”), we are left with the uneasy understanding that we need do nothing more than continue to shell out £20 for a t-shirt, £4 for empowerment dog tags or £800 or more on leather travel bags to effectively address these issues.
Only when these campaigns begin to embolden us to change our behaviour rather than encourage us to assuage our guilt by buying their wares will efforts by Vuitton and other companies become more useful to society. The Vuitton ads will come out in full force this fall. Expect to see tennis pros Stefi Graff and Andre Agassi snuggling in a hotel within eyesight of a Vuitton product, actress Catherine Deneuve dramatically perched atop LV suitcases with a huge locomotive just behind her and Gorbachev in a town car that undoubtedly uses fossil fuels. If Vuitton is truly concerned about the environment and sustainable development, why not show Graff and Agassi in a solar-powered building, Deneuve using the subway or Gorbachev riding a bike? But perhaps I am missing the point. The point of wallowing in luxury, after all, is to be extravagant without giving a second’s thought to necessity and consumer responsibility. If Louis Vuitton’s environmental journey only deigns to ensure that I travel in style rather than with both style and a sense of responsibility to the environment, then I think I’d rather save my £800 and stick to what I think makes a difference: recycling, never using plastic bags, and traversing Oxford on foot.
Peiling Li
Editor-in-Chief
Balliol College
September 2007
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