The Redefining Luxury conference was held on October 5th at Parsons School of Design, as part of the Redefining Luxury initiative. The event was opened by Kay Unger (Parsons Board of Trustees) and included panel discussions throughout the day with prominent industry speakers including Christopher Lacy, Director of Customer Experience, Learning and Strategy, Barneys New York; Lisle Richards, Chief Operating Officer, The Metrics (Kola House); Noa Raviv, Fashion Designer; Marie Driscoll, Fashion Tech Lab, Fashion Tech Advisor; Ben Prosky, Executive Director, Center for Architecture; Carol Chen, Covetella; Karin Raguin, VP of Global Talent, Christian Dior Couture; Preeti Gopinath, Parsons, Director of the MFA Textile Program; and a keynote by Mark Fina, Creative Director, Air Paris.

Led by faculty and students in the School of Design Strategies and the School of Fashion, Redefining Luxury, seeks to challenge current definitions of Luxury, provoke new paradigms in the Luxury Industry, and challenge the relevance and future of luxury.

The concepts and attributional constructs commonly associated with luxury are founded on the dated structures conceived at the turn of the Industrial Revolution, leading to detrimental narratives and outdated business practices. As an institution committed to creative strategies to solve the most pressing social issues, students and faculty at Parsons are questioning the roles and responsibilities in the field of Luxury, to fostering sustainable practices, equity, and social justice.

This initiative celebrates a moment of change where advances in biotechnology may make material rarity obsolete; advances in digital technology and social media have created new expectations that remove authority from a single source; consumers are valuing experiences over physical product, and developments in AI and blockchain will change our decision-making processes.

Redefining Luxury Taskforce

Erin Cho, Associate Professor of Design & Management, School of Design Strategies

Emily Huggard, Assistant Professor of Fashion Communication, Parsons School of Fashion

Jessica Corr, Assistant Professor of Design, Parsons, The New School

Wendy W Fok, Assistant Professor of Integrated Design, School of Design Strategies

Please visit http://parsonsredefiningluxury.org for a list of events and how to get involved.