Luisaviaroma’s Sustainability Project Furthers Philanthropy Path For The Italian Retailer

Andrea Panconesi, the third generation former CEO and now President and Chairman of Luisaviaroma, is making good on his desire to let the fashion-forward luxury retailer stand for more than stylish dressing. A new climate-crisis photo collection, My Earth is Beating—which documents the impact of climate change and solutions to combat it through a language that uses art, photography, storytelling, and investigative journalism—released the latest installment ‘Toy Stores’ by photographer Gabriele Galimberti in partnership with ExtremeE to promote the rewilding project in England which returns a thriving eco-system to urban and rural areas. The #myEIB initiative is part of the LVRSustainable division which aids in the fight against climate change recounted through photo art and storytelling. The 91-year-old Florentine merchant with one physical store and healthy global e-commerce business is invested in the notion that doing good is good for business.

“Being a private brand, we can do what we want with our money; we invest our money where we think it can make a difference for a good purpose,” Panconesi stated during an interview last summer in conjunction with another philanthropic effort the brand is known for; the UNICEF fundraising gala. (The brand finalized a deal with its first partner, Style Capital in late October of this year; Panconesi retains 60 percent of the company.) “My experience tells me if you invest in a good cause, you get back two times as much,” he explains of his philanthropic strategy. Despite sponsoring large scale events and project, the Chairman insists he spends less than competitors do on social media marketing on platforms such as Google GOOG and Facebook.

The My Earth is Beating campaign launched in March 2021, enlisting Galimberti, along with fellow award-winning photographer, Luca Locatelli along with journalist Raffaele Panizza to bring to light environmental issues globally. According to a release, in only ten months of reporting, the project team says they have ‘moved from fear to assurance that the world will breathe new life and will be saved, a bit like the rest of the world has, moved by new ecological awareness.’

Thus far, the team has followed partner Extreme E—the off-road electric car race aimed to bring attention to the climate change— path to document grave environmental conditions in  Saudia Arabia, Lac Rose, Senegal; Kangerlussuaq, Greenland; Sardinia, Italy and Dorset, England. In the first leg, the project drew attention to desertification; in Central Senegal, the focus was mangrove reforestation, an intelligent biome able to seal the landscape from the rising sea levels. Next the tour headed to Greenland, to tell the story of Inua, the climate superheroes. The fourth took place in Sardinia, amongst wildfires and dives into the Oceanic Posidonia prairies considered the Mediterranean Amazon. This latest stop was England, in the rewilding region between London and Dorset.

The latest photo, taken in West Dorset, depicts viscount Luke Montagu and his wife Julie who inspired by their environmental activist and vegetarian teenage son Nestor decided not to renew their land’s lease to various meat farmers. The effort will allow Mapperton Estate’s wild animals and the vegetation to revive. The rewilding philosophy aims to restore natural processes to landscapes that have been degraded by humans.

“We’ve been inspired by experiences such as the one at Knepp Castle in West Sussex, created by conservationist Isabella Tree,” says Montagu, adding “we’ll introduce Exmoor ponies and beavers on a thousand hectares land for a biodiversity project called Mapperton Wildlands here; soon, we’ll organize real safaris”.

 My Earth Is Beating under the #myEIB is a picture gallery available for media and influencers worldwide, who country by country, from China to the United States, have released, re-posted, commented, and published a huge and unedited experiment of ‘citizen journalism.’ National Geographic’s Instagram profile itself on many occasions has released stories documented on My Earth Is Beating.

 “For each stage, Locatelli and Galimberti and Panizza will make available to the press, and then to the collective knowledge, a selection of stories and beautiful, decisive shots,” says Andrea Panconesi, president of LuisaViaRoma, “which at the end of this great odyssey of awareness will be further enhanced on the occasion of an international exhibition in Florence, the city where LuisaViaRoma has its headquarters: cradle of the Renaissance and not coincidentally also of this new climate renaissance to which we are all called to make a contribution.”

“My Earth Is Beating represents an important opportunity to make the world of Natural Solutions known,” said both Locatelli and Panizza, respectively art and editorial directors of the project, “If man helps nature to reconquer its own spaces, nature can save itself. And consequently, all of us.”

For Panconesi, these charitable acts were his sole prerogative as a privately held company until recently when the partnership with Style Capital took effect. The chairman has made it clear that as it was his own money, he wanted to make a difference with his work. This prompted was in many cases by insistence from his daughter Luisa who urged the family patriarch to become more philanthropic,