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!

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.