Sustainability as Language in Contemporary Jewellery: Discourses, Myths, and the Legitimation of Value

Abstract

In contemporary jewellery design debates sustainability is often approached as a set of technical practices or a normative objective. This paper proposes to instead interpret it as a device capable of influencing the ways in which the industry defines, communicates and legitimises value. Through a qualitative analysis of 130 case studies selected between 2019 and 2024 in the jewellery and related design fields, the research identifies four recurring configurations through which sustainability takes shape in contemporary jewellery: Conscious Crafters, Tomorrow Shapers, Change Drivers and Moulded Mindsets. Organised using the Design Orienting Scenarios framework (Manzini & Jégou, 2003), these configurations are considered not as normative models or projections of the future, but as interpretative constructs useful for making visible recurring ways in which sustainability becomes legible and establishes itself as a criterion of value. Starting from these configurations the article shows how the discourse on sustainability tends to consolidate recurring narratives (linked to responsible materiality, participation, transparency and collective awareness) that transform historically situated associations into qualities perceived as self-evident. The paper's contribution is therefore to demonstrate how sustainability operates in contemporary jewellery as a discursive mechanism that reorganises value through processes of repetition, recognition and naturalisation. Jewellery thus emerges as a privileged observatory for analysing how value is being redefined within the fashion system today.