High end fashion brands like Prada, Channel, and Gucci are both worshipped and reviled by fans and foes. Consumers worship them for the status and images of luxury that their brands infer. Some observers criticize them for their role in driving our consumption-driven culture. Occasionally, companies have landed in trouble for their dodgy business practices, such as when Prada was exposed for having Chinese workers shipped to Italy at low wages to make designer heels and handbags.

It was not always this way. Brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci new bags had humble origins as artisans who cobbled and stitched well made goods. But years later as a celebrity culture emerged, these brands blared more images of an aspirational style than anything about superior quality. Meanwhile, other companies were acquired by larger firms whose priorities align with short term shareholder value more than value for the customer.

But can these fashion houses sell more than status and wealth, and perhaps even sustainability?

Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of Futerra Communications and regular contributor to The Guardian’s Sustainable Business site, regularly writes “open letters” to CEOs of major global firms. Her latest letter to Robert Polet, CEO of the Gucci bag Group, urges him and his company to take a lead role in transforming consumerism. She points out the usual concerns over fashion’s growth: an expanding global middle class, the increased rate in the consumption of natural resources, and the scourges of the global textile industry from pesticides to child labor.