In Pursuit of Luxury Conference 2026 - Time for Change

Time for Change is a collaboration between Ravensbourne University London and Goldsmiths, University of London, and will be hosted across both institutions. Day One will take place at Ravensbourne, and Day Two will be held at Goldsmiths.

https://inpursuitofluxury.com/event/ipol-conference-2026/

Time to Change confronts luxury at a moment of reckoning. This is not another academic and industry gathering celebrating heritage and craftsmanship; it is an interrogation. Building on IPOL 2025’s Honest Luxury, which exposed the exploitation, extraction, and ethical compromises behind luxury branded objects and services, 2026 asks what comes next.

Can luxury transform, or is it structurally incapable of meaningful change? We convene scholars, makers, critics, activists, and industry specialists to challenge Eurocentric paradigms, dismantle inherited hierarchies, and question whether luxury deserves a future at all. This is a space for uncomfortable truths, radical alternatives, and genuine debate. If luxury will not change now, in the face of climate crisis and extreme inequality, then when—and if not through this generation of thinkers and makers, then who?​

Luxury is at a crossroads. Geopolitical shifts, environmental urgencies, and evolving cultural values are dismantling old certainties. Heritage, exclusivity, and European dominance—once unquestioned pillars of luxury—are now sites of critical scrutiny. What was once aspirational is increasingly seen as morally fraught.​

At IPOL 2025, Honest Luxury laid bare contradictions at the heart of the industry: exploitation masked by elegance, greenwashing cloaked in brand narratives, and colonial residues woven into the fabric of legacy brands. But exposure is not enough. Time to Change moves from critique to confrontation and asks how luxury must be reimagined—or abandoned—if it is to have any ethical legitimacy in the future.​

This year, we ask:

• Can luxury change?
• Should it?
• And, more urgently—does it even want to?

Time is not just a metaphor; it is the critical lens for IPOL 2026. We want to explore how time shapes the making, meaning, and moral status of luxury today.

• Historical time weighs heavily through tradition, heritage, and intergenerational knowledge.
• Present time demands urgency, as social movements and climate tipping points outpace slow institutional reform.
• Future time questions whether luxury will have a role—or even legitimacy—in the decades to come.

We invite reflections on how time intersects with ethics, aesthetics, production, and cultural storytelling in luxury. Can brands genuinely balance preservation and innovation? Can craft traditions be honoured without reproducing the exploitative or colonial structures they sometimes carry? Can luxury ever be fast without becoming disposable?

We are especially interested in the temporal tensions shaping luxury today:

• Fast fashion vs slow craft
• Quarterly profits vs generational thinking
• Trend cycles vs timelessness
• Nostalgia vs innovation

These tensions have real-world implications—for workers, communities, ecosystems, and the cultural meanings attached to material things.

We encourage provocations that do more than intellectualise: submissions should engage materially, politically, and imaginatively with the stakes of luxury today.

• Power, geography and who decides
  Who defines luxury, for whom, and from where? How do colonial histories, global inequalities, and shifting geopolitical centres reshape authority and aspiration?
• Time, speed and the paradox of transformation
  How do speed, urgency, delay, and duration structure luxury’s production, consumption, and possibility for change?
• Value, desire and the economics of aspiration
  How are value and desire produced, priced, and policed in luxury economies, and who is excluded or exploited in the process?
• Authenticity, transparency and the problem of truth
  What counts as “authentic” or “honest” in luxury, and how do brands, media, and consumers construct—or resist—these truths?
• Craft, culture and the question of survival
  How can craft traditions, local knowledges, and cultural practices survive within (or against) global luxury systems?
• Technology, innovation and the future of exclusivity
  How do AI, digital platforms, virtual goods, and new materials reconfigure scarcity, access, and the performance of status?​

Submissions may address these tracks from critical, practical, speculative, or activist perspectives.

We welcome submissions involving:

• Academic papers (conceptual, empirical, comparative, or methodological)
• Industry presentations and provocations (especially those open to self-critique)
• Artist-, designer-, and maker-led talks
• Short films, visual essays, or creative artefacts
• Cross-disciplinary panels and experimental workshops
• Performances, installations, or interventions that disrupt conventional formats

We actively encourage proposals from across the luxury value chain—from artisans and entrepreneurs to scholars, strategists, and campaigners—and from all global regions, particularly those historically excluded from dominant narratives.​

• Abstract: max 300 words
• Please include you name, affiliation, job title, contact number and email address
• Include: title, 3–5 keywords, and short bio (max 150 words)
• Deadline: 31st May 2026
• Submission platform: by email to [email protected]
• Notification of acceptance: 7 July 2026

https://inpursuitofluxury.com/submit-your-abstract/

IPOL 2026 will be a space for dialogue, rigorous critique, and bold experimentation. We seek work that challenges the status quo, exposes contradictions, or proposes uncomfortable solutions. If your contribution questions received wisdom, troubles established narratives, or makes audiences productively uncomfortable, it is likely on the right track. Selected contributions may also be invited to develop work further for publication in Luxury Studies: The In Pursuit of Luxury Journal and related IPOL publications.

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