Advocate Programme with Izzy Zeuch: The Problem With Modern Luxury

We spend a lot of time talking about how our cashmere is made, but less about how it feels.

But instead of us telling you, we're handing over to a group of women who inspire us, and live their lives in Baker Miller Pink Cashmere.

We're calling it our Advocate Programme because it's the simplest way to describe stories from people who genuinely live in what we make.

Here's the first...

The most interesting people in fashion rarely begin in fashion at all. Isabelle "Izzy" Zeuch spent more than a decade in banking, much of it focused on impact and social finance, funding renewable energy projects and microfinance initiatives before turning that same analytical mindset toward her wardrobe.

And once she did, she couldn’t unsee what she found.

That realisation became The Conscious Glitterati, a platform dedicated to questioning the assumptions modern fashion is built on. Not just what we buy, but why we buy it in the first place.

"I didn't come here to tell people what to buy. I came to help them understand what they're really buying into."

What makes Izzy’s perspective refreshing is that she doesn’t speak the language fashion usually speaks. She isn’t interested in trends for the sake of trends, or luxury for the sake of status. Her background trained her to ask harder questions: Who benefits? What’s actually behind the claim? What’s the long-term impact?

"The disconnect became impossible to ignore."

That same scrutiny led her to redefine what luxury actually means. And notably, it has very little to do with price.

"Conscious luxury is not about price. It's about intention. If something doesn't last or isn't worn, it's not luxury. It's just expensive."

That distinction feels increasingly relevant in a world where “luxury” is often little more than clever branding and inflated pricing. Plenty of garments are technically premium, expensive fabrics, beautiful campaigns, glossy packaging, but are designed to lose their appeal after a season or two. They feel exciting in the moment, then quietly deteriorate, stretch, pill, or disappear into the back of the wardrobe.

At Baker Miller Pink Cashmere, we think about this tension constantly because cashmere sits directly in the middle of it. There’s cashmere designed to feel luxurious under bright shop lighting, and then there’s cashmere designed to live with you properly. To soften with wear. To become a piece you instinctively reach for every winter because it still works, still feels beautiful, still earns its place.

That, to us, is luxury.

Which is why Izzy’s answer on whether luxury and sustainability can coexist felt so honest.

"Yes, but not at scale. True luxury has always been about rarity, craftsmanship, and longevity. Sustainability fits naturally into that, but only if we move away from the idea that luxury should be constantly new and endlessly available."

It’s an uncomfortable idea for an industry built on overconsumption. But perhaps that’s exactly the point.

Real "luxury" was never supposed to be disposable.