The 2021 edition of the Luxury Marketing Innovation Summit was held on Tuesday, March 30, and on this occasion, several topics were presented in the form of a panel or keynote speech, opening the dialogue around current issues related to the circular economy in the luxury sector. Mina El Hadraoui (Natural Diamond Council, Collectif Diamant), Olivier Segura (L’école des arts joailliers Van Cleef & Arpels), Arnaud Haefelin (Gainerie 91), Noémie Dumesnil (Authentic Materials) thus questioned themselves in order to better understand how naturalness and transparency can help restore consumer confidence.
The panel entitled “How Naturalness and Transparency can help rebuild trust and consumer confidence?” welcomed four speakers, from relatively different backgrounds but all concerned with the issue of naturalness and transparency in the luxury sector.
Mina El Hadraoui (Natural Diamond Council, Collectif Diamant), Olivier Segura (Van Cleef & Arpels School of Jewelry Arts), Arnaud Haefelin (Gainerie 91), Noémie Dumesnil (Authentic Materials) offered their point of view on the issue, as well as some food for thought in order to constitute the beginning of an answer on this subject which greatly affects the sector.
For Mina El Hadraoui, head of the Natural Diamond Council in France and spokesperson for the Collectif Diamant, there is still a great deal of confusion in the diamond world, as she explained in her keynote speech before the panel. She adds: “For the year 2020, it is thanks to natural diamonds that the world market has suffered less than expected. ”
Mina El Hadraoui goes on to say that natural diamonds and synthetic diamonds are “two levels of products, which are not in competition with each other because they are two different products with totally different markets, and also we try to be very clear for the consumer because the most important thing is to give the right information, we are not about what he will buy at the end but he must do it with all the information and with the clear information about what he will buy”.
For Mina, transparency is paramount in the diamond sector, because, as the head of France of the Natural Diamond Council and spokesperson for the Collectif Diamant points out, “confusion is a disappointment”. For Olivier Segura, the scientific director of the Van Cleef & Arpels School of Jewelry Arts, “it is very important, as Mina stated, to be careful with the terms and words we use“.
Olivier Segura adds: “I speak as a scientist and I do not pose for or against synthetic or natural diamonds, but we must understand what materials are.” To the question: “Is there a difference? (between synthetic and natural diamonds),” he replies, “Yes, there is a huge difference. One is the natural material made by the Earth, crystallized millions and billions of years ago under our feet, two hundred kilometers deep, so it is an incredible material, it also represents a lot of symbols, a lot of history.”
By way of comparison, Olivier Segura reminds us that “When we talk about synthetic diamonds, it is a manufactured product made with carbons, so of course we have the same atoms in the same place, but it is not totally different. When we are scientists, we can tell the difference very easily with our tools.”
Arnaud Haefelin, President and CEO of the Gainerie 91 brand, joined the previous two speakers in explaining that “in leather, we have the same problem because, like diamonds, leather has been defined by French decree, and we can only define leather as a natural material, which comes from animals.”
Noémie Dumesnil, head of operations at Authentic Material, is also concerned with this issue of naturalness in leather, as one of the main materials Authentic Material uses is leather, “We work on all natural materials. What we do is salute design in the sense of materials engineering and produce innovative materials based on discarded natural materials for the luxury industry.”
Find the full panel “How Naturalness and Transparency can help rebuild trust and consumer confidence?” from the Luxury Marketing Innovation Summit 2021 soon in Luxus+ Magazine.
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