Leonie Bell, who was born in Dundee and grew up in nearby Fife, is the Director of V&A Dundee. Prior to this, she worked in a diverse range of roles and organisational settings, advocating for the transformative potential of culture and creativity across society. She began her career at Glasgow 1999: UK City of Architecture & Design before joining The Lighthouse, Scotland’s Centre for Architecture, Design & the City, where she led an ambitious programme of exhibitions, festivals and events. From there she moved to Creative Scotland before joining the Scottish Government as Head of Culture Strategy & Engagement.

Tim Blanks, eminent fashion journalist, broadcaster and writer, has been Editor-at-Large of The Business of Fashion since 2015. He has written for the industry’s leading titles, including Vogue, GQ and the Financial Times. Blanks contribution to fashion journalism was recognised by the Council of Fashion Designers of America with the most prestigious Media Award in 2013. He covers fashion’s personalities as well as seasonal runway shows. Blanks’ voice is one of the most important in the industry at large, inspiring future generations of designers, writers and consumers.

April Crichton co-founded La Fetiche with Orély Forestier in 2017 with the idea to make joyful, irreverent, everyday clothing to treasure forever. April works in Glasgow and Orély is based in Paris. Having met whilst working together for Sonia Rykiel in Paris, they found a shared love of design that blended French chic and Scottish eccentricity. By celebrating local French and Scottish manufacturing skills in collaboration with traditional artisans the idea of creating the La Fetiche brand was born. The name was inspired by an idea of creating clothing that they have always loved, things they obsess over, pieces that share both a sentimental and talisman-like appeal.

Oriole Cullen is Head of Modern Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and curated its current sell-out exhibition about Gabrielle Chanel, having previously curated the museum’s Christian Dior exhibition in 2019. Born in Dublin, Oriole studied the History of Dress at London’s Courtauld Institute before working at the Museum of London as Curator of Dress and Decorative Arts.

Giles Deacon is a London-based couture designer and illustrator mixing fashion, fine art, theatre and grand-scale glamour, known for his expertly crafted pieces using bespoke designed fabrics, prints and intricate embellishments. His pieces are worn and collected the world over by private clients, red carpet celebrities and royalty with pieces in the permanent collections of the V&A Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As a costume designer, he has worked with the New York City Ballet, Marvel, Lions Gate Films and Fox Searchlight.

His work receives international acclaim with coverage in publications including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, W Magazine, Love, InStyle USA, Elle, The World of Interiors and the Wall Street Journal Magazine with features in the Times, New York Times, Figaro and The South China Post.

Aside from fashion design, Giles is an established illustrator and his work has been exhibited widely and has appeared in publications such as Vogue, the New York Times, Architectural Digest, Interview Magazine and W Magazine.

For his work Giles received the British Designer of the Year Award.

Nathalie Dufour is the founder and managing director of fashion's prestigious Association Nationale pour le Développement des Arts de la Mode (ANDAM), an organisation dedicated to keeping the Parisian fashion scene vital and dynamic by identifying and subsidising the most promising designers in the fashion industry today.

Dufour's first interaction with fashion was making her own clothing at age 14. She later studied at a number of acclaimed Parisian schools including L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales and at the École du Louvre.

In 1989, Dufour founded the non-profit organisation ANDAM, under the guidance of Pierre Bergé, and support of the French Ministry of Culture and DEFI. The organisation runs an annual competition for emerging fashion designers, offering the winner the opportunity to present at Paris Fashion Week as well as mentoring and €250,000 in prize money. Dufour also created the "premiere collection" prize of €75,000, which is awarded to a fledgling fashion house.

Dufour has partnered with the likes of LVMH, M.A.C. Cosmetics and Swarovski in supporting their efforts to scout potential talents from around the world. In July 2016, she was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by Pierre Bergé.

Bay Garnett has over two decades’ worth of experience in the fashion industry, starting as an assistant in a photographic agency. She was Contributing Fashion Editor at Vogue and her current roles include being the Senior Fashion Advisor to Oxfam. Bay is the co-founder of the influential Cheap Date magazine, hosts the podcast This Old Thing and is a pioneer of the thrifting trend (Bay was the first fashion editor to include vintage pieces in luxury shoots).

At Oxfam, Bay continues to celebrate and champion creative sustainability, including overseeing their Second-Hand September campaign and curating their catwalk show which opened the last London Fashion Week. She is partial to gold chains and leopard print.

Kirsty is a graduate of Museum & Gallery Studies at the University of St Andrews. She worked at the McManus, Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum, cataloguing embroidery and quilting in its costume collection. She then moved to the V&A Dundee where was has most recently co-curated the museum’s current exhibition, Tartan, a radical new look at one of the world’s best-known and best-loved textiles.

Born and raised in the Highlands of Scotland, Iseabal is inspired by traditional craft skills that she grew up with, from basket-weaving to boatbuilding to roof-thatching. Her handwoven leatherwork is a labour of love; a time-consuming process that is meditative in its intricacy. Both her practice and her life in the Highlands are acts of slowing down and taking a step back from day-to-day life.

Working by hand also gives her a deep understanding of her materials. The organic process of vegetable tanning leather results in a unique patina which changes over time, dependent on how it’s handled. This ever-changing quality mirrors the landscape, which continually transforms with the shifting light.

Her practice originated from a desire for zero-waste. By weaving very thin strips of leather with cotton, she can make use of the entire hide with almost no wastage. I source all of her materials within Europe, and some even closer to home in Scotland. Sourcing locally not only ensures a lower carbon footprint, but also a better knowledge of the supply chain and those within it. Her work weaves together environmental values, a modern aesthetic based on time-honoured techniques and materials, with the landscape that continually inspires her to make.

Iseabal’s work was selected for Collect at Somerset House, London in 2023, and her work is currently being exhibited at The Bluecoat Display Centre in Liverpool. She has been selected as this year's Artist In Residence with Atlas Arts.

Bethan is fashion news & features director at The Telegraph. Royal style is a personal and professional obsession. She has written hundreds of articles dissecting the messages behind what the royal family wear and has interviewed many of the designers and stylists behind some of the most memorable looks worn by Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana, the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Sussex.

She has appeared on BBC, Sky, Channel 4 and ITV speaking about royal fashion and featured in ITV’s Royal Wives of Windsor documentary in 2018. She was shortlisted for Fashion Journalist of the Year at the 2018 and 2019 Press Awards. Bethan has written two books, The Duchess of Cambridge: A Decade of Modern Royal Style (2021) and The Queen: 70 Years of Majestic Style (2022).

Hugo is a design critic, curator and co-founder of Bard, an Edinburgh-based gallery dedicated to Scottish craft and design. A former design editor at Wallpaper* and Monocle, Hugo was then brand director of Ilse Crawford’s design practise, Studioilse. He has since consulted for clients including Instagram, Vitra, The Goldsmiths Company, Erdem, Airbnb and Ikea. He twice curated the Object Section of the Milan Art Fair, and the craft biennial at Harewood House in Yorkshire. Hugo lives in Edinburgh with his husband James and their lurcher Dougal. He will be the 38th chief of the Macdonald clan.

Charlie Porter (@theCharliePorter) is the author of Bring No Clothes:Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion and has been described as one of the most influential fashion journalists of his time. He is a writer, fashion critic and art curator who has contributed regularly to the Financial Times, Guardian, New York Times, GQ, Luncheon, i-D and Fantastic Man. He was a juror for the Turner Prize in 2019, and lives in London. His first book was What Artists Wear.