Katy Wellesley, EMiLUX Alumna, launches Compelling, a podcast exploring art, culture and luxury

Living in Paris, “you can't escape the world of luxury,” says Katy Wellesley Wesley, Executive Master in Luxury Management & Design Innovation Alumna and now the creator of the podcast Compelling. “This city really is the beating heart of that universe.”

Compelling is Katy’s newest entrepreneurial venture: a podcast built around in-depth interviews with industry leaders in the field of art, culture and luxury. When we asked her what inspired her to launch her podcast, Katy shared that she has “become fascinated by the interconnectedness of these three worlds” which, for her, have so much in common: “creativity, exclusivity and a degree of mysticism”. She wanted, through this podcast, to open the doors to these worlds so that listeners can “go inside the visionary minds shaping art, culture and luxury today.”

Katy spoke to us about this new project, the inspiration behind it and the path that she took to make it happen.

Inside the world of Compelling: voices of industry leaders

Asked to describe Compelling in three words, Katy doesn’t hesitate: “Insightful, Inspiring, Positive.”

Compelling is built around the concept of having real, “informal, authentic conversations” with leaders in art, culture and luxury “that lift the curtain on businesses, practices and priorities for leading lights in these worlds.”

Two examples of those visionary minds are the guests that make up the first two episodes of the podcast.

Lena Evstafieva, the focus of the first episode, is the visionary founder of Villa Lena Hotel and Foundation. She stands out as the creator of a “magical experience-led slow luxury haven and artist residency, and the two are wonderfully synergetic. It's relatively common now but when she founded back in 2013, on a shoestring budget, it was an act of radical confidence in the power of creativity and community to support a business.”

Her second guest, Lee Shulman, is the founder of The Anonymous Project. The conversation is fascinating: “Lee evades categorisation – he's a collector, curator, artist, film director, photographer and book maker extraordinaire. Lee amassed the largest collection of anonymous photographic slides in the world - and now makes diverse projects from exhibitions to books to films showcasing them.”

The calibre and quality of the first two guests already hint at the strength of what’s to come, with many more inspiring voices lined up in the coming episodes.

Katy’s story: from EMiLUX to entrepreneurship

“The number one product you're always selling is you”

How was this idea born? Katy explains how her diverse career path and her 12-month EMiLUX experience led her to launch the podcast: “I have been in the commercial gallery world, in a not-for-profit foundation, an environmentally led art logistics startup and most recently worked as an independent consultant,” she says. “My career has been getting more and more entrepreneurial along the way. This project is simply an extension along that path. You can create the conversations you want to have.”

The EMiLUX experience, she adds, gave her a more global, strategic mindset. “The EMiLUX course gave me tools to think more strategically and balance intuition with fact, and business-specific considerations with macro and geographical factors. In other words, to think globally and support one's business ideas with research and data.”

But it was when she sensed a shift happening in the industry that she decided to capture it through a podcast. For Katy, “the playbook for these worlds is shifting. Luxury maisons are revisiting their founding principles, and marketing strategy is shifting from quick celebrity endorsement to authentic cultural alignment and storytelling.” With these deep changes happening and her entrepreneurial spirit rising, it felt like the right time for Katy to take the leap.

We asked her if there were any moments from her EMiLUX program that stuck to her throughout this entrepreneurial journey. One moment comes to mind immediately: “one of the professors from Parsons, Dr. Caryn Pang, memorably said 'The number one product you're always selling is you.'”. Katy is British, a culture often known for “deferring and offering humility” so this message emboldened her to have confidence in herself and take the leap. “Her words made an impact on me, and I thought I'd give it a go, despite feeling some inherent anxiety about the self-promotional nature of podcasting.”

Shaping the luxury conversation in a shifting environment

“Luxury gives credibility and identity to many countries - first among them: my adoptive home, France.”

As someone who’s long observed the luxury industry from both inside and out, Katy is candid about its challenges. “It’s no secret that the luxury world has contracted over the past 2 years, and that there is huge saturation and fatigue of seeing the same kind of content,” she notes. “The challenge is to maintain desirability, creativity and strong identity.”

In this context, she hopes that Compelling will contribute to the broader conversation about the future of the industry, offering new perspectives on how we define luxury today. She shares that her aim is to “bring awareness to ideas and businesses and creativity that listeners wouldn’t normally access”.

Beyond that, it’s also about the significance of how the luxury industry is built. It is an industry that “supports craftsmanship and connoisseurship that might otherwise have completely disappeared” and is deeply tied to the identity of many countries. In this context, having these conversations, for Katy, ensures that creativity and differentiation and stories and meaning are still very much alive.

Concretely, for listeners, the aim is to bring “Curiosity, inspiration and some actionable or helpful insights to take with them into their lives.” In other words, learning from the best.

Compelling is a testament to Katy’s journey, bringing together the themes that have shaped her path: creativity, business insight and a global outlook. Through her conversations, she invites listeners to step into the worlds of art, culture and luxury, and to see how they intersect, evolve and influence one another. The project connects her passions and experiences, and reflects the mindset encouraged at ESSEC: staying curious, open and willing to explore new ideas.

Listen to the podcast

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