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land in a private plane on the African savannah. Ali is beautiful, her hair slightly windswept, she is looking into the distant African landscape, a brown embossed leather Louis Vuitton holdall is pressed to her side. Behind her Bono follows, insouciantly carrying a guitar in one hand a Vuitton monogrammed weekend bag across his left shoulder. They stride towards their destination -- an orphanage, a refugee community, a farmer’s collective? Here, in this advert they are seen saving Africa, one Louis Vuitton bag at a time.

This is the premise of a recent ad campaign for the Louis Vuitton luxury brand’s “core values” series. In 2009, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey (LVMH), the conglomerate which owns Louis Vuitton, bought a 49 per cent stake in Edun, the ethical fashion brand started by Ali Hewson in 2005. Although they carry Vuitton bags in the advert, the clothes they wear are from Edun’s own product lines.

Ali’s Louis Vuitton holdall in the advert is a specially commissioned piece, retailing at around Rs 2.19 lakh.

For each one sold, LVMH, with a reported revenue $17.05 billion (Rs 78,128 crore) in 2009, donates part of the proceeds to charities chosen by Edun, including The Conservation Initiative, a charity they set up in Uganda to help rehabilitate displaced farmers through organic cotton farming.

The idea of organic cotton itself fits into a broader concern with the impact of textiles on the environment and the ways in which fashion can be connected to positive efforts to conserve bio-diversity. LVMH is one of many luxury groups increasingly concerned with their “green credentials”, as the idea of sustainable luxury has taken root and LVMH’s stake in the ethical fashion brand came at a time when Edun was facing severe problems with production, cash flow and brand image.

Yet the relationship between Edun and LVMH raises uncomfortable questions around the way luxury companies address environmental and social responsibility, when these issues, which imply a fundamental re-ordering of supply chains, may instead be glossed over with high-profile charitable initiatives. Jem Bendell, international CSR expert and founder of authenticluxury.net, is less than sanguine about the LVMH-Edun collaboration.

He explains: “In setting up Edun, Ali Hewson was demonstrating how Africa is a place of creativity and industry, a place to engage with. It was a message of everyone’s dignity, not a few celebrities’ charity. Since the LVMH group bought into Edun, Africa is depicted as a charity case. They switched most production to Asia, and tell us nothing of who makes their stuff or in what conditions. To make up for that, Louis Vuitton now offers some charity to Africa. It’s good that the money raised will go to initiatives to help capacity build the cotton industry, but what of the workers and communities that make the LV bags in Asia or Latin America?”

In sum, what Louis Vuitton’s investment in Edun, in the face of a general lack of transparency of the group’s own labour and environmental practices, highlights the danger that sustainable luxury may be reduced to a charitable gesture or a marketable fad, rather than a vital component in building an alternative fashion system.

Indeed organic cotton’s role in promoting livelihoods and protecting the environment is more than a nice story to sell a luxury leather handbag. Increasingly biodiversity has been seen as a form of “natural capital” worth trillions of dollars on a global scale. In his book Imagining India, Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani urges how many Indian environmentalists have been calling for a form of “accounting” for the environmental impacts of industry for decades. At the Nagoya biodiversity summit in October this year, one of the more positive gains in the general impasse of wrangling between nations was that India became one of the first countries to agree to publish annual reports on its “natural wealth”.

One thing this is predicted to do is help to assess the impact of production on the environment and place more value on farmers who use less or no chemicals for crop cultivation, effectively honouring their key role as custodians of biodiversity. India is at the forefront of the global organic cotton industry, producing 51 per cent of the world’s non-chemically cultivated cotton in 2008 with almost all of it going to the export market. Organic cotton, though a niche market, is nonetheless a significant one. An Organic Exchange report showed that globally the market for organic cotton stood at $4.3 billion in consumer sales in 2009.

Consumers’ imaginations have been lit by revelations of the environmental impact of orthodox cotton farming, which involves levels of pesticides that make it one of the most polluting crops on the planet. Farmer livelihoods are the other side of the organic cotton story and a big focus is on how organic cotton can provide better and more secure livelihoods with more direct access to markets outside of the frame of middle players. So although not all organic cotton is currently produced under “Fairtrade” conditions, it’s logical that this should be the long-term goal.

The Mumbai-based not-for-profit Shop for Change, launched in 2009, is devoted to developing a Fairtrade label for the Indian market and its big focus has been on organic cotton. As Seth Petchers, CEO of Shop for Change, notes: “…the environment doesn’t take care of itself. People care for the environment, and if cotton farming families are given a fair chance to earn a decent living and the support they need to grow greener, there can be a more positive link between cotton and the environment. Fairtrade gives farmers that fair chance”.

The international market for organic Fairtrade cotton is largely divided into two quite distinct market segments. On the one hand there are niche sustainable fashion brands such as the UK’s People Tree, and on the other are giant retail chains such as Marks & Spencer and Topshop, which are beginning to integrate cotton into product lines. The latter trend comes with its own thorny issues of mainstreaming and co-optation of the organic and Fairtrade agenda. The problem with the niche brands is they aren’t collectively big enough to absorb sufficient quantities of organic cotton to make it a viable market. Key to the adoption of organic cotton by large retailers is that organic cotton shouldn’t be seen as a “magic bullet” but as part of more broad-ranging commitments to review and transform the entire range of materials used in products to be more sustainable or replace them with alternatives. A good example of the latter is Marks & Spencer’s Plan A, consisting of 180 commitments the company aims to achieve by 2015, including efforts to reduce waste, use more sustainable raw materials and trade more ethically.

Yet what about the much touted “image problem” that Fairtrade organic cotton is said to labour under? No doubt some consumers still associate it with lumpy clothes or a token feel-good t-shirt purchase. But exploding this myth are People Tree, designers such as Sweden’s Camilla Norback or India’s own Anita Dongre, all of who are marrying organic, Fairtrade cotton with stylish design.

In a recent collection under her Grassroots label, Dongre sent flowing maxis and cinched the 50s inspired cocktail dresses down the catwalk. All were printed using special air dyeing processes with vegetable based inks, meaning less water use and no toxic chemicals. What’s also important is that Dongre is in it for the long haul. This collection used organic Fairtrade cotton for every piece shown on the catwalk and represents her third season of collaboration with Shop for Change. Anita notes: “Organic is perceived as unstylish, but my whole style is feminine and pretty. I cant change my style and what I do in organic has to be about that.”

And where are the big luxury brands in the story of organic and Fairtrade cotton? Hitherto eco- and social labelling has not been seen as desirable for the “DNA” of luxury brands whose cachet rests on exclusivity and the idea of European fine craftsmanship. Yet, as market segmentation creates mass produced luxury, frequently originating from global supply chains stretching as far as China and India, many luxury brands are now having to face up to the realities of their own impact on the environment and questions of fair labour practices. The temptation has been to retreat into feel-good charitable campaigns or one-off products hyped way beyond their real meaning for a company’s claim to sustainable luxury.

Jem Bendell says of the Louis Vuitton-Edun collaboration: “Only by providing decent work in sustainable enterprises will people's lives be improved in the longer term, whether in Africa, Asia or anywhere… Responsible business is about how you make your money, not how you give it away. It's time Louis Vuitton got some better advisors about responsible business, and social development.”

Perhaps a key place to begin would be integrating organic Fairtrade cotton as part of a wide-ranging review of its materials procurement practices across the entire LVMH conglomerate. They could take, for a start, the eponymous monogrammed bags with the LV logo or Damier patterns made from coated canvas. What would be the “brand proposition” of Louis Vuitton monogrammed canvas bags made with Fairtrade, organic cotton in factories embodying the latest in sustainable technology and solid fair labour practices?

This would represent a by far greater contribution to both farmers’ livelihoods and ensuring factory workers a fair wage, than charitable donations based on the sale of a single bag, because one thing seems clear, sustainable luxury isn’t about feel-good charity, it’s about trying to change the way business is done, a luxury we cant afford to do without — for ours and future generations.

Phyllida Jay is an anthropologist specialising in sustainable fashion and is currently writing her doctoral thesis on sustainable and ethical consumption in India. She also researches how luxury brands can innovate on excellence in creativity, design and materials to address 21st century challenges of climate change and loss of biodiversity as well as labour rights in global supply chains. Phyllida is luxe editor at Financial Chronicle.