Istituto Marangoni is a global fashion and design institute whose nine international schools attract students from over 99 countries. An integral part of its offering is giving students opportunities to work closely with key industry figures. These insiders impart invaluable insight about social and environmental challenges students may go on to face in their later endeavours as designers and/or entrepreneurs.

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Istituto Marangoni London is hosting and participating in several events this year. These include a symposium examining the future of luxury trends in fashion and design, an ongoing fashion talk series, and special events for London Design Festival later this year (16-24 September).

At the school’s site on Fashion Street in Shoreditch, the Design in Conversation With series is presently underway, too. This is a series of conversations between high-profile experts in the design industry.

Challenges to designing for the future underpin these talks. The next conversation, for instance, will address running a business that is both sustainable and successful. Scheduled for 26 April, the event will see Sean Sutcliffe speak with Debika Ray. Sutcliffe is co-founder of Benchmark, a leading UK furniture manufacturer producing timber pieces with the intention of being sustainable while adding to the wellbeing of its customers.

Ray, meanwhile, is editor of Crafts magazine. Having contributed to world-leading publications ranging from The Financial Times and Al Jazeera to Architectural Digest and Wallpaper*, she specialises in writing about arts and culture, and is interested in the Global South and diasporic communities.

On 10 May it will be hosting the talk ‘How can design narratives develop in an age of visual overload?’ Panellists will consider how best to respond to social media as a prism through which consumers, for better or worse, increasingly see the world. They will also discuss how designers of the future might establish compellingly authentic identities in this climate of “visual overload”.

Speakers will include Tony Chambers, founder of TC & Friends, co-chair of Brainstorm Design, and former editor-in-chief of Wallpaper* magazine. He will speak with Samta Nadeem, who leads curatorial programming and communications at design and architecture collective STIRworld, and is currently on assignment at the Design Museum London as Acting Assistant Curator: Public Programmes.

Valérie Berdah Levy, director of Istituto Marangoni London, commented:

‘Istituto Marangoni London is excited to welcome these high-profile design names to the school. We hope that our students will find these talks inspirational and useful, imbuing them with optimism and excitement as they develop their own voice within the design industry.’

To find out more and reserve places for the upcoming conversations, both of which are free and open to the general public, visit eventbrite.co.uk