The process of artification for luxury brands searching for a new balance between ethics and aestethics

Structural changes have profoundly modified the luxury sector considered a niche until recently. These changes have deeply affected the very essence of luxury said to be characterized by a balance between ethics and aesthetics. Luxury brands are losing on ethics mainly due to their recent acceptance of profitability criteria based on economic logics calling for enlarged production volumes and wider distribution. However, we argue such loss of ethics can be counterbalanced by an increase in aesthetics through ever-growing partnerships with the art world which structure Business & Art relationships. This re-balancing process has two main reasons. For one thing, luxury brands are increasingly part of large conglomerates while in the past they used to be family-based companies attached to their specific know-how. We claim this disconnect results in loss of ethics. For another thing, some brands can fully claim their closeness to the world of contemporary art which promotes values of borderlessness and no longer bans partnerships with business on principles of art for art’s sake. Conscious of their cross-border position, luxury brands can take advantage of the porosity between their sector and that of art to re-balance the loss in ethics by an increase in aesthetics. This would help redefine their core constituents, thus relying on a solid financial structure to support their strategy. These luxury brands undergo a full artification process that turns them into art subjects able to produce inaccessible, intermediary and accessible objects in the luxury sector.