London – The new hotel brand aims to align every aspect of its design and services with a holistic approach to wellness.
Set across six Georgian townhouses, Inhabit describes itself as London’s ‘first mindful hotel’. The concept looks to offer a restorative experience in the city, celebrating conscious hospitality with a range of sustainable, eco-friendly and ethical initiatives.
Throughout the hotel, Inhabit promotes a sense of wellbeing by maximising natural light and filtering pollution with air filtration systems from Airlabs. Its 89 bedroom feature ethical homewares, personal care products using sustainably sourced ingredients, and Casper’s eco-friendly VOC-free mattresses, which are made of natural organic materials such as wool and cotton. Its fitness facilities include Peleton indoor cycling and a Clearlight Infrared Sauna, as well as meditation pod where guests and visitors can enjoy five-to six-minute-long guided sessions.
In our Conscious Tourism Market, we explore some of the ways travel and hospitality brands are promoting sustainability.
US – Iris&Romeo hopes to streamline beauty consumers’ lives with its collection of ‘do-it-all hybrid’ skincare.
Specifically targeting Generation X women, the brand is taking the multiple steps of daily skincare regimes and consolidating them into products that are as ‘effortless as throwing on a moisturiser’. Launching with the Best Skin Days moisturiser, the $64 (£52, €58) cream combines SPF with blue light and pollution protection, and a subtle colour tint to match multiple skin tones.
‘Who has time for an 8-step routine every morning? Between kids, coffee, gym, emails, shower, get dressed… it’s a miracle you get out the door,’ reads the Iris&Romeo website. Alongside conforming to EU standards, which bans 1,400 ingredients from being used in beauty products, the brand also touts its sustainability credentials, using glass containers that are 100% recyclable and outer packaging is made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper.
Look out for our new beauty macrotrend launching in September, which will examine the effort brands are making to become more holistically responsible in their operations.
Sweden – Luddites are given a lesson in the good that comes from screen time in telecom company’s latest campaign.
Telenor’s 60-second campaign, The world has changed, have you?, demonstrates just how far reaching and persuasive our online actions can be – for the better. Created by Swedish agency Acne, it features an e-sports player panned for not having ‘a real job’, and a mother who asks her daughter ‘why don’t you meet someone for real instead?’ as she swipes through a dating app. Telenor playfully upends these outmoded attitudes by speeding through the successes that can come from being connected.
While unbound screen time and social apps have been widely criticised for creating a generation of addicted device users, Telenor is promoting the positives of lives lived digitally. As we pin, post and preen our online identities, these personality fragments are forming the new components of a Sharded Self – in which we inhabit multiple lives, both on and offline.
Amsterdam - Adidas is championing a new fashion process that forefronts raw textiles as a mode of sustainable fashion.
The activewear brand has partnered with the textile innovation studio BYBORRE to create a new design process called TRUE COLOR, which urges designers to reduce their reliance on dyeing, finishing, inefficient construction and garment processing. The partnership has launched a capsule collection to demonstrate these core principles. The garments, which feature innovative materials from companies like GORE-TEX, The Woolmark Company, Nylstar and Majocchi, offer clean cut designs contrasted with knitted textures.
Denis Dekovic, vice president of design at adidas commented: ‘BYBORRE and adidas don’t expect everyone to stop using all color and/or finishings, but expect everyone to start asking the right questions to challenge the current industry’s ways.’
Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact that clothing manufacturing has on the world around them and as a result brands like Volcom have been working on improving the transparency of their supply chains.
Beijing – The new accessory consignment store employs a cohort of professional consultants to educate customers on the individual items for sale.
Designed by Studio8, the Musée flagship is an open platform for luxury accessories in Beijing. The store assistants are focused on enriching customers’ in-store experience by offering them in-depth insight into the items on sale.
‘Every accessory that people possess is an abstract object that serves a certain function or purpose,’ says Studio8’s principal designer Shirley Dong. ‘This changes when people place more importance and value on the object, whether through the brand, colour, material, or handcrafting process. Luxury goods then become time travellers, with an ever-increasing value and preciousness.’ The studio has adopted a ’soft boundary’ approach to its design in order to better facilitate unstructured way-finding and encourage item discovery.
The resale market is booming. With consumers looking for more ethical, sustainable, and circular ways to obtain luxury good it is currently growing 24 times faster than traditional retail. In response to this shift in mindset we are now seeing a host of new brands creating innovative resale platforms.
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