Prof Shaun Borstrock PhD FRSA
Conference Curator · Founder, IPOL

Shaun Borstrock spends his career asking an uncomfortable question, do luxury brands actually deliver what they promise? Are they luxury?, or do they just ‘perform’ well? As Professor of Luxury and Consumer Culture and Head of Knowledge Exchange and Research at Ravensbourne University London and founder of In Pursuit of Luxury, he draws a hard line between luxury brands as fashion and luxury as an idea rooted in sustainability, craftsmanship and lasting value. His framework, LuxWashing, interrogates the gap between brand claims and material reality, tracing supply chains back to their true environmental and human cost rather than their story. He pushes brands past decorative sustainability claims toward genuinely regenerative practice. He advises luxury brands directly, co developed the world’s first fully customisable 3D printed textile, and has spent over twenty years moving between academia, consultancy and industry without losing his edge in any of them. 

Dr Brett Staniland
Fashion Writer, Academic, Activist and Model

Dr Brett Staniland – Fashion Writer, Academic, Activist and model. After more than a decade in the modelling industry, Brett turned his firsthand industry insight into academic and critical practice, becoming a leading voice on sustainability in fashion. He is a passionate advocate for meaningful change, using his platform to challenge the industry’s relationship with sustainability and to hold brands and institutions accountable for the gap between their claims and their practices. Brett creates multi platform content spanning written commentary, broadcast and podcast formats, translating scholarly research into public facing conversation. His contribution to In Pursuit of Luxury explores the intersection of luxury, craftsmanship and ethical production. His dual perspective, having worked inside the fashion industry before turning a critical academic eye on it, gives his commentary a rare combination of credibility, insight and bite.

Sam Bompas
Co-founder, Bompas & Parr

Sam Bompas first came to prominence alongside Harry Parr through their expertise in jelly making, a foundation that rapidly grew into a fully fledged creative studio offering food and drink design, brand consultancy and immersive experiences across a diverse range of industries.
Sam’s focus is storytelling, the underlying narrative that shapes and often defines the experiences he and his team create. The studio explores gastronomic experiences from around the world, from stories drawn from the Incense Road in AlUla to an exploratory British menu built around a carefully curated AI experience, developed by a diverse group of UK visionaries and presented in New York.
Alongside its experimental and production work, the studio provides strategy, analysis and advice for brands seeking to deepen engagement with people through experience design.