Luxury Fashion and Creativity: Change or Continuity?

Abstract

This chapter considers the role of creativity in the production and delivery of luxury fashion goods and services. The concept of creativity is closely aligned to the idea of luxury goods as rare and highly crafted, often unique, objects produced through artistic endeavour. Moreover, some luxuries, like expensive cars and private jets, require leading edge design and technologically advanced inputs. Although creativity is essential for the development of new luxury goods and services, this article highlights that some luxuries are timeless and eschew the changes associated with radical creative transformations in favour of maintaining continuity with the past. Following a brief discussion of the nature of luxury and creativity, a number of examples are employed to illustrate the different roles of creativity in the development and delivery of different types of luxury goods and services. To illustrate these differences in the field of luxury fashion retail management a comparison is then drawn between the iconic British luxury fashion brand Burberry and the Australian bespoke tailoring and shirt making company J. H. Cutler. The relationship between luxury and creativity is shown to be varied and complex.

This chapter builds on the following article published by the authors: Roberts, J. and Armitage, J. (2015), ‘Luxury and Creativity: Exploration, Exploitation, or Preservation?’ Technology Innovation Management Review Vol 5, No. 7, pp. 41–49 available at http://timreview.ca/article/913 (published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License).