Johnson School Fashion Forum

Last night I attended the Johnson School Fashion Forum (The Paradigm Shift: How are Consumers Changing in a Post-Recession World?). As a Cornell alumni it was one of the best Cornell events I have been to (even if technically it was an MBA school event)!

Impressive speakers, great crowd and using a café in Saks was the perfect venue! The panel discussed the impact of the recession on consumers as well as each company’s strategy to shift people from the ‘sale only’ mentality back to full priced items. I don’t believe we will ever go back to the extreme-shoppers are a lot more informed and deal driven (explosion of gilt group and factory stores).

Most of the panel stuck around afterwards to chat which was nice and not always the case in these events. There was as usual some blatent ‘please give me a job and to do this I’m going to suck up and ask lame questions’ type of people but that’s pretty expected. The majority of the crowd was very friendly and I had some interesting conversations.

I’m glad to see more interest in fashion and luxury in higher educational forums. It is too often that fashion events are just frivolous so this was a great change. I’m hoping there are more of these forums-Johnson School I'm looking at you!