Welcome to In Pursuit of Luxury Live, Season 10 of the In Pursuit of Luxury podcast. Continuing our focus on the amazing live discussions we had at the In Pursuit of Luxury Conference 2025, Honest Luxury. This time we are bringing you the second part of our conversation between Bijou Abiola, Vice President and Chief of Staff to the CEO of Cartier and Sam Bompas from Bompas and Parr.

Welcome to In Pursuit of Luxury Live, Season 10 of the In Pursuit of Luxury podcast. Continuing our focus on the amazing live discussions we had at the In Pursuit of Luxury Conference 2025, Honest Luxury. This time we are bringing you a conversation between Bijou Abiola, Vice President and Chief of Staff to the CEO of Cartier and Sam Bompas from Bompas and Parr.

Welcome to In Pursuit of Luxury Live, Season 10 of the In Pursuit of Luxury podcast. Continuing our focus on the amazing live discussions we had at the In Pursuit of Luxury Conference 2025, Honest Luxury. This time we are bringing you a conversation between Margaret Macleod, CEO of Harris Tweed Hebrides and Gordon Ritchie, CEO of Crombie hosted by James Campbell of Intellect Books.

Welcome to In Pursuit of Luxury Live, Season 10 of the In Pursuit of Luxury podcast. Continuing our focus on the amazing live discussions we had at the In Pursuit of Luxury Conference 2025, Honest Luxury. This time we are bringing you part 2 of an amazing conversation between Dame Zandra Rhodes, Maria Grachvogel, Richard McVettis and Piers Atkinson. 

Welcome to season 10 of the In Pursuit of Luxury podcast. This is a special season because we are focusing on In Pursuit of Luxury, Honest Luxury live, and that means it's the live debates and discussions we had at the In Pursuit of Luxury Conference in June 2025. We've got some amazing guests including Dame Zandra Rhodes, Maria Grachvogel Sam Bompas, Richard McVetis, Piers Atkinson, Gordon Ritchie, Margaret Macleod, and Bijou Abiola. They all have amazing things to say about luxury and we welcome you to this, a super exciting season 10 of the In Pursuit of Luxury podcast.

Patrick Grant has a lot to say about clothes; how many we buy, how we value them, what they’re made from, and importantly who made them and where. His campaigning clothes brand Community Clothing supports local clothing and textile manufacturers across the UK and Patrick is an outspoken advocate for radical change in the fashion industry. He is a regular on TV and Radio being best known for his role on the hit BBC series The Great British Sewing Bee. His new book LESS was published by Harper Collins in May 2024 and was an instant Sunday Times bestseller!

Known for her fabulously bold prints, the iconic British designer, Dame Zandra Rhodes, launched her eponymous fashion brand 56 years ago. Nicknamed ‘The Princess of Punk’, Rhodes burst onto the fashion scene in the late 1960s and continues to work from her studio in London. Rhodes began as a printed textile designer and is renowned for perfecting the art-of-print as an intrinsic influence on garment shape. With dramatic designs and her own distinctive look, Rhodes paved the way for fashion as theatre and entertainment. Her illustrious career has seen her dress international stars including Freddie Mercury, Diana Ross and Barbara Streisand, and British Royalty, most notably, Princess Diana and Princess Anne.

Richard McVetis studied at Manchester School of Art before studying at the Royal College of Art, where he now teaches. McVetis has been shortlisted for several distinguished prizes, including the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, UK, 2023; the Jerwood Drawing Prize, UK, 2011 and 2017, and the international Loewe Craft Prize, 2018. In addition, McVetis has shown work nationally and internationally at several exhibitions, including Threads at Arnolfini, UK, 2023; The British Textile Biennial, UK, 2021; RENEW at Kettles Yard, UK, 2019; Loewe Craft Prize, Design Museum, London, UK, 2018; ‘Form + Motion’ – a major exhibition with the British Council, South Korea, 2017. In 2022 his solo show was at the Craft Study Centre, Farnham.

Mark enjoyed a 25-year career in hospitality, developing and running some of London’s most successful restaurants and hotels including Moro Restaurant, Zetter Hotel, and the Grain Store in Kings Cross. In 2011 Mark co-founded the Sustainable Restaurant Association which with its brand Food Made Good is fast becoming the global standard for sustainable food service businesses. Alongside every other member of his family, Mark dedicates much of his time to philanthropy focusing his Trust’s giving in the areas of climate change, sustainable food systems, and music for good. In 2012 he partnered with his late father Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover and his brother Julian to set up Candover Valley Wines which makes the award-winning Candover Brook, an English sparkling wine from their 5 Hectare vineyard on Preston Farm. Mark and his siblings Sarah and Julian run the two family farms in Hampshire. Together with the enlightened stewardship of their estate manager Craig Livingston, they have spent the last 9 years farming regeneratively and seek to share their successes and their learning through multiple events and channels.

Obsessed with the idea that clothing can transform your body, your mood and your confidence Maria experiments with innovative cutting always keeping the woman who wears the clothing front of mind. She is personally committed to preserving the craft of luxury fashion and is working with a technology partner to reimagine the future of fashion. One could easily describe Maria is a fashion architect instinctively interested in materials, shape, form and flow. Today we talk to Maria not only about her clothes but about embracing change in a changing world.

Geordie Willis is Creative Director for Berry Bros. & Rudd. One of the oldest wine and spirit merchants in the World. With their headquarters based on St James Street in London, Berry Bros. & Rudd has been the official wine supplier to the British royal family since the reign of King George III and received its first royal warrant of appointment in 1903 from King Edward VII.

Grant Gibson is one of the UK’s leading design, craft and architecture writers. His work has been published in The Observer, New Statesman, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, and House & Garden, to name just a few. During a long career in magazines, Grant has been editor of Blueprint, deputy editor of FX, and acting executive editor of the RIBA Journal. More recently he has been editor of Crafts and a contributing editor of the Dutch architecture title MARK. He was also the launch editor of the London Design Festival Guide and co-founded Real to Reel, the UK’s first film festival devoted to making. In 2019, he launched the critically acclaimed podcast, Material Matters with Grant Gibson. Three years later the show was transformed into a new fair at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf. Material Matters 2023 takes place at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf from 20-23 September.

Marc Chaya is CEO and co-founder of perfumery house Francis Kurkdjian. Marc was inspired by creativity as a child but his parents encouraged him to follow a career in business. Having started his career at EY a global consultancy, Marc made partner in record time, at the age of 32. It was during this time that he met Francis Kurkdjian, already an accomplished perfumer having invented scents for Jean Paul Gaultier. What struck Marc was how little recognition perfumers had. And he set out to change that. In 2009 the house of Francis Kurkdjian was born. It is now a global player in the world of fragrance.

Nadia Tuma-Weldon is Global Head of Thought Leadership at McCann Worldgroup, and Executive Vice President of Truth Central, the agency’s global intelligence unit. She was named to Luxury Daily’s Luxury Women to Watch in 2021 list. She has nearly 10 years of thought leadership experience, leading global pieces of research on topics as varied as globalization, sustainability, affluence, privacy and age. As Global Head of Thought Leadership, Nadia guides the organization in producing elevated insights that both unearths hidden truths across global culture, and leads to greater business impact.

Carl was born in the Austrian Alps surrounded by biodynamic and organic smallholder farmers. At 15, he started studies in graphic design and communications, and later specialized in brand strategy. He then did a year of volunteer work with street kids in Ecuador, where he met his wife. Social and environmental impact guides his work, along with the belief that nature is the ultimate luxury. At 27, he co-founded To'ak, a sustainable luxury chocolate brand that works to preserve an ancient cacao variety in Ecuador. A few years later, he co-founded Xoca, an upcycled cacao-based CPG, and Orijin, which focuses on digital supply chain management and transparency.

Adam Brand is the 4th generation co-owner of M&S Schmalberg the flower makers in New York. M&S Schmalberg, founded in 1916, is the last remaining manufacturer of artificial flowers in the New York City garment district. Using the same vintage manufacturing process since 1916, they provide exquisite quality and a level of artisanal customization that is not that easy to come by anymore.  Some of their vintage flower moulds date back to the turn of the century. Their studio is amazing, it is like going back in time to when personal customer service was the forefront of any artisanal company. Aside from seeing thousands of amazing flowers you can meet the makers whose pride in their work is phenomenal, as is Adam’s passion for what he does.

Philip Hanson is a young driver to watch, in the field of endurance sportscar racing. During his short career he has already smashed records and competed in prestigious races such as Le Mans 24 and Rolex 24 Hours, at Daytona, alongside two-time F1 champion, Fernando Alonso. Phil was crowned World Endurance Champion, the youngest driver to achieve this, won the European Le Mans Series and was the youngest ever Brit to win the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans, in September 2020. 

Kathryn started her career in the wonderful world of tailoring at Gieves & Hawkes in 1996, rising to the position of Head Cutter, the first woman to do so in the entire history of Savile Row. She founded her own tailoring house in 2012 and is the world’s only female Master Tailor. Breaking tradition, she offers tailoring for both men and women focusing on the needs of the client rather than a set house style.

Kenya Hunt is the Editor-in-Chief of ELLE UK. Kenya’s career spans working for some of the most influential women’s titles on both sides of the Atlantic. From her post-graduate days as an Assistant Editor at the seminal magazine, Jane, to her time as Deputy Editor of Grazia UK and ELLE UK. She has written for some of the most prestigious publications in the world including The Washington Post, The Guardian, Essence, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Refinery29 and The Evening Standard. She has also appeared on BBC Woman’s Hour, and Sky News.  As the founder of R.O.O.M. Mentoring, she advocates for greater diversity within the fashion industry by providing a supportive network for some of the many talented aspiring designers, journalists and image makers of colour London has to offer. In 2021, she was recognised by The British Fashion Council for her work and awarded a Global Leader Of Change Award.

T Michael is a bespoke tailor/ designer /artist with a conceptual approach to men’s tailoring inspired by his love of sartorial traditions and his passionate quest for a different narrative within tailoring, design and creativity, that celebrates stylistic and cultural diversities present in today's zeitgeist. He is known for his meticulous attention to details and for his garments’ impeccable construction. T Michael’s work include: The T KIMONO, NORWEGIAN RAIN and his eponymous label T-MICHAEL. Join us for a thoroughly engaging chat as we discuss the influence of Japan, different things that inspire his creativity and not being inspired by fashion.