Luxury Brand Outsiders: Understanding the sucess of British and American Luxury Brands

British and to a lesser extent, American luxury brands have played an important, if somewhat marginal, role in the international luxury fashion and accessories sector for some considerable time. Often these brands are long-established leaders in their field and their excellence readily acknowledged, for example Burberry was established in 1856, while Tiffany& Co. was founded even earlier, in 1837. Despite the long history of luxury brands such as these, it is certainly the case that consideration of the trading features and characteristics of British and American brands has largely been absent from the literature. Instead, the focus has been principally confined to the history and market development of French luxury brands, the reason for which is explored in more depth below. However, it is not the lack of researcher attention with respect to British and American brands that is the principal motivation for their consideration in this chapter, (although we would acknowledge the value in their gaining deeper researcher attention). Much rather, we would argue that British and American luxury fashion and accessory brands are definitively different, by virtue of their origins, their ownership characteristics and their function. These brands are also fundamentally different in terms of how they define and approach the development of a luxury company. Perhaps most significantly, we would argue that there is a new force of business innovation and growth within the British and American luxury sector that outpaces the numbers being created in other important luxury markets. This has resulted in the emergence of a new generation of luxury fashion and accessories brands that represent a new view of the purpose and scope of luxury which in turn serves to further strengthen and deepen the difference between British and American luxury fashion brands in general from those luxury fashion brands that eminate from Italy, and France, in particular. In order to begin a debate with respect to the value of considering luxury brands on the basis of their place or origin and principal trading activity, (in this case Britain and the USA), as well as to provide an opportunity for an exploration of understanding with respect to emergent generation of luxury fashion brands, this chapter will not be focused upon the provisions of new theoretical reflections or indeed, a new conceptual development. Instead, it will follow the tradition of business history research that instead intends to stimulate and support research interest in an area by identifying and exploring defining features and differentiating characteristics. As such, the aim of this chapter will be to identify the defining features and differentiating characteristics of luxury and fashion brands from Britain and the USA.