Conversation with Timo Rissanen, Associate Professor, UTS
Timo Rissanen challenges listeners with innovative ways to think more sustainability about the fashion system, including design and retail. He focuses on the role that consumers play in this complex system and discusses the intrinsic connection between sustainability and social justice.
Conversation with Vasumathi Soundararajan, Service & Interaction Designer, Fjord
Vasumathi Soundararajan describes her role and ethos as a service and interaction designer, focused on how customers experience brands digitally and physically. She shares insight, as an entrepreneur, on growing a customer-centric business.
Conversation with Donald Rattner, Architect & Author
Donald Rattner discusses the science behind space design with a focus on how retailers can connect more organically and successfully with customers. He coins a new term, “retidential” design, a mash-up of retail and residential, to describe a movement towards more intimate, home-like retail spaces.
Conversation with Dr. Guido Lang, Associate Professor, Quinnipiac University
Dr. Guido Lang shares his insights on developing new ideas and bringing them to the market, especially in the technology space. He reinforces the idea that staying focused on solving one particular problem first, before trying to scale, is key to a successful new business. And he discusses the need for a more inclusive education in digital skills.
Fashion & Racism, A Conversation with Sabrina Lynch, Integrated Marketing Specialist
Producer Joshua Williams joins host Christopher Lacy to share in a special conversation with Sabrina Lynch, an integrated marketing and communication specialist about the issue of race and fashion, specifically as it relates to black people. This episode includes frank discussion about the systemic racism inherent in fashion, the commoditization of black culture and the lack of black voices in the industry, and concludes with a challenge for fashion brands to listen, reflect and act for equity and inclusion.
Conversation with Sam Cotton, Creative Director, Raiment
Sam Cotton shares insight on the fashion design process within the context of the full supply chain, from sourcing materials and production to retailing and end use. He discusses the fashion industry within the wider lens of philosophic and economic models and shares his ideas for a more sustainable future.
Bonus Conversation: Jeanette & Glenda
MPS Fashion Management students Jeanette Gong and Glenda Widjaja share their retail strategies for Aimé Leon Dore and Urban Outfitters, as part of their “Retailing and Service Design” final projects. They also provide insight on Gen Z customers and how brands can better engage them.
Bonus Conversation: Emily & Jessica
Global Fashion Management students Emily Wiens and Jessica Tsai share their retail strategies for Net-a-Porter and Mujui, as part of their “Retailing and Service Design” final projects. They also provide insight on youth culture, consumer engagement and post-pandemic retailing.
Conversation with Jon Harari, CEO, WindowsWear
Jon Harari shares his insight about the digitization of fashion and the work WindowsWear is doing to aggregate the creativity of store designers, visual merchandisers and packaging specialists. He equates information as power in a digital economy.
Bustle article features Joshua Williams discussing Fashion Post-Pandemic
Why do major historic moments change how we dress?
“Historic moments are integrally linked to sartorial response,” McElvain says. “For example, during WWII, women were used to wearing shorter A-line skirts due to austerity measures and available materials. After Christian Dior introduced huge pleated skirts in 1947, women were ready to indulge.”
You can go back even further, according to Joshua Williams, assistant professor of fashion management at the Parsons School of Design. “Specifically, [think] of fashion post-French Revolution,” Williams says. “During the Reign of Terror, children of the aristocrats used fashion as a way to create community and provoke society to bring attention to their lost families and fortunes. They would often wear transparent clothes in public, as well as exaggerated styles such as outrageous hats. They were known as “‘Les Incroyables et Les Merveilleuses.’”
Ultimately, this exaggerated style led to “a simplification of fashion,” according to Williams. “That was more the rage during Napoleon’s reign,” he says. “For example, [there was] the empire waist that was much more comfortable to wear, especially for women, than the layered, extravagant styles pre-war. I see parallels with this move toward comfort and ease of movement happening now.”
Conversation with Xia Feng, E-Com Expert & CEO, The How Consulting
Xia Feng illuminates the major shifts that are happening in the fashion digital space. She discusses how the Chinese market may hold answers for American and European brands and their quest to connect more authentically, and in real time, with consumers online.
Conversation with Brandon Roe, Marketing Expert & Author
Brandon Roe provides insight on how luxury brands can better engage customers by understanding the unique cohorts that shop for luxury products and services. He also provides clear steps that fashion brands can take to ensure they manage through the Covid-19 crisis—internally and externally—and come out stronger post-pandemic.
Conversation with Meisha Brown, VP Department Stores, Kering Eyewear
Meisha Brown shares her deep experience and perspective in multi-label luxury merchandising in a time of major retail disruption. She discusses everything from developing brands on the store floor through thoughtful merchandising to dealing with vendor relationships. She also offers advice to future merchandisers, including the need to understand both retail math and fashion trends.
Conversation with Noam Levavi, CEO, BYOND XR
Noam Levavi challenges our concepts of what retail might look like in 3 to 5 years, discussing how the shift into the virtual world will be accelerated post Covid-19 pandemic and how adopting new technologies will unveil new opportunities for brands, retailers and designers. He elaborates how the virtual transformation will allow brands to be more innovative, personalized, efficient and sustainable in how they design, showroom and sell their products and services.
Bonus Episode: Hopes & Fears for Fashion’s Future
In this short, bonus episode, Jordana Guimaraes discusses the hopes and fears that fashion industry professionals are grappling with during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notwithstanding the real issues the pandemic has created, she posits that a time of crisis creates opportunity to design innovative solutions.
Conversation with Kevin Thompson, Chief Brand Strategist
Kevin Thompson shares his perspective on the changing landscape of retailing, particularly as it relates to brick & mortar operations and design. He also discusses the marketing needs of a fashion brand and how communication is a two-way street, wherein customers must have a voice.
Conversation with Lauren McGuire, President, Man Made Music
Lauren McGuire discusses sonic branding and the use of sound overall in retail environments, online and onsite. She focuses on how sound impacts the shopping experience, and shares her insight on how sound might be used after we reach the end of the pandemic.
Conversation with Claire Mitchell, Design & Innovation Consultant
Claire Mitchell discusses the evolving role of technology in fashion retailing, sharing her predictions for their term. She also discusses the implications of technology in fashion, everything from how customer's shop to issues of sustainability
Conversation with Dr. Niz Safrudin, Design Engagement Lead, SAP
Dr. Niz Safrudin shares her insight regarding the intersection of physical and digital space and the real challenges of “omni-channel” retailing. She also discusses the potential opportunities brands may have to reset after the pandemic.