JEWELLERY & WATCHES
LA MAISON COUTURE
La Maison Couture is a multi-channel retail platform showcasing sustainable fine jewellery, responsible jewellery makers, independent jewellers and lifestyle brands with cutting-edge design. Their mission is to champion and mentor established and emerging brands committed to social and environmental change. Their brands are game-changers in their field, showcasing the best in sustainable innovation, pioneering design, exceptional quality and creativity.
SUSTAINABILITY ETHOS
La Maison Couture’s vision for a more conscious and sustainable jewellery industry translates across all areas of our work and partnerships. Our brands are assessed on a five point sustainability criteria, ensuring that it remains true to its reputation as a progressive and supportive platform, and the ever growing industry relationships with world-renowned retailers ensures it can continue to educate and inspire responsible consumption through its motto to ‘Buy Better’.
Established
2008
Headquarters
UK
Employees
1-10
Categories
Luxury Jewellery and Accessories
Website
Distribution
Worldwide
A WORD FROM THE FOUNDER
I re-launched La Maison Couture in 2015 after becoming increasingly aware of the ethical and environmental issues underlying the jewellery industry. It has since been our mission to embrace the imperative of responsible sourcing. To seek, support and promote luxury jewellery brands who are committed to ensuring sustainable and ethical production and to give our customers the joy, of discovering timeless, meaningful pieces, that have a positive impact on our planet’s people and resources.
TANIA MCNAB
FOUNDER
BUTTERFLY MARK TESTIMONIAL
Sustainability is a journey of education, inspiration and innovation and through the ESG+ assessment we are excited to be able to continue to grow as a business as well as support small, independent, multi-national designers in our shared vision for a more responsible jewellery industry. To be recognised with Positive Luxury’s Butterfly Mark stands us out as a leader at the forefront, helping to change the jewellery industry on a global scale.
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SUSTAINABLE SOURCING
La Maison Couture works closely with its stocked brands to understand more about the work they are doing regarding sustainability and created a brand self-assessment questionnaire to aid sharing of information. The questionnaire covers a variety of topics such as certifications and accreditations, UN Sustainable Development Goals, actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy conservation methods. La Maison Couture aim to have all brands complete this questionnaire by 2025 or earlier in order to have as transparent a view on their brand partners as possible.
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CIRCULARITY
La Maison Couture’s carefully curated selection of responsible brands represents the retailer’s passion for promoting the use of recycled materials in jewellery making. 48% of La Maison Couture’s brands currently source recycled materials to design and produce their fine jewellery and by the end of 2023, they aim to increase their selection of brands using only recycled materials to 65%. La Maison Couture not only seeks to highlight the importance of recycled materials and regenerative design concepts at the design stage, but also strives to action end-of-life strategies of jewellery by partnering with re-sell and repurpose platforms. La Maison Couture believes that meaningful jewellery only represents exceptional quality and creativity, if paired with a positive impact on our planet’s people and resources.
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REPORTING & SDG ALIGNMENT
To increase transparency with consumers, La Maison Couture has a dedicated sustainability section on its website. On the ‘Ethical Jewellery Terms’ section, it goes over key terms that are used in the jewellery industry such as responsible versus ethical jewellery, lab grown diamonds, and recycled materials. La Maison Couture also inform customers of how it decides which brands to partner with and use a five-point criteria system to do so. The criteria covers ethical production, responsible sourcing, artisanal collaboration, positive impact, circular and regenerative and alignment with UN SDGs. On the final page of the sustainability section, they also state what the company’s goals are moving forward including improving supply chain transparency and collaborating with brand partners to conduct annual reports on social and environmental impacts. As part of its goals, La Maison Couture have aligned with several UN SDGs and have set 2030 targets for each one. For example, for UN SDG #5, to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, 70% of La Maison Couture’s current stocked brands re female founded and it aims to bring that up to 75% by 2030.
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PACKAGING EFFICIENCY
La Maison Couture is working at both company and retailer level to ensure that packaging has the lowest environmental impact possible. La Maison Couture branded packaging is zero plastic, made of 100% recyclable or biodegradable materials and re-used internally as much as possible. As part of La Maison Couture’s onboarding criteria for brand partners, it continues to promote brands that are using recycled materials. A few brand partners do use small pieces of plastic to support pieces in transit, and La Maison Couture are working with these partners to eliminate these pieces of plastic by 2025.
WHERE NEXT?
Creative responsibility has been part of La Maison Couture's DNA from inception and as it seeks to continually push boundaries for the benevolence of people and planet, the brand is excited about their vision going forwards. Its Circular and Regenerative impact will focus on the introduction of our Zero Extraction policy; by 2030, or earlier, the brand will require 75% of our brands to be working with recycled/ upcycled materials and metals. It is working towards the elimination of all its Stakeholders' plastic packaging by 2025. Furthermore, the brand is currently seeking opportunities to partner with a re-sell jewellery platform that embraces end-of-lie strategies and innovative buy-back schemes. La Maison Couture's ongoing fundraising work with Earthbeat Foundation, to support the funds needed to enhance the lives of the small-scale miners in Busia, is an opportunity to “give back” and have a direct influence on positively impacting and helping to repair the damages of the past and preserve the future of the industry. Internally, the team hopes that through the introduction of its recently launched La Maison Couture Certified logo, which recognises the outstanding impact work its brands are doing for positive social and environmental change, it can support and educate its brand stakeholders on their sustainability journeys.