As a salute to the Luxury Education Foundation’s 20-year anniversary, senior executives, students, and alumni gathered Thursday for a celebration at Christie’s in New York.

LEF chair and Chanel France’s managing director Joyce Green and LEF cofounder and president and KFMG Investments’ investment manager Ketty Pucci-Sisti Maisonrouge welcomed the crowd of 150 people. The pair spoke of the organization’s early start two decades ago with eight people in a room, including Thursday’s keynote speaker Robert Chavez, former president and chief executive officer of Hermès Americas and LEF’s chairman emeritus.

The current state of the luxury market and its ever-changing state were discussed during several talks. Many participants including BCG X’s Raakhi Agrawal and BCG’s Vanessa Lyon offered a forward-looking spin about AI and encouraged attendees to use it to enhance white glove customer service with a human touch. In the marquee keynote “The Future of Luxury,” Chavez was interviewed by Fairchild Media Group’s chief content officer James Fallon. Here are some of the highlights.

Career lessons learned by working for department stores and luxury stores:

Robert Chavez: “I always like to say that I almost learned what not to do, as much as I learned what to do. The key takeaway was it’s always about people. People are what make and break everything.”

Leading with emotion:

R.C.: “I’ve always been an emotional leader. I’m not afraid to talk about emotion or to address people with emotion. A lot of the Hermès team is here and they could tell you that I would sign off almost all of my emails with ‘Love.’ People would say, ‘You can’t do that.’ I would say, ‘But why?’ They would say, ‘You just can’t do that. You’re a CEO.’ And I would say, ‘Why not?’ I’ve always believed that if you can bring people respect, recognition and just care about them that makes all of the difference in the world.”

Leading amid massive growth:

R.C.: “It’s the recognition factor and the motivation factor. The people on the frontlines are your ambassadors. I have this theory called ‘the last three feet.’ We can source the finest materials, find the best craftspeople, and build the most beautiful stores. But if the client has a really negative experience with your ambassador in the last three feet, none of that matters. We can teach you everything about Hermès – saddles, shoes, ready-to-wear. But we cannot teach you to smile. If you’re not a happy person, we’re not going to teach you to be happy.”

Is there a slowdown in luxury or a normalization?

R.C.: “I don’t think luxury is slowing down. With luxury, you have spirits, cars, products, of course, and hospitality. Luxury in hospitality is exploding right now. Look at all the brands creating these amazing yachts and the demand is high. Some brands are experiencing a slowdown for various reasons, but in general there is no slowdown in luxury. The fact is wealthy people are getting wealthier. They have a lot of dispensable income, and they want to spend it. They want experiences. That is what they are looking for.”

Are brand-funded trips for the much sought-after 300 top-tier clients a given?

R.C.: “For some brands, it is. Others, like Hermès, don’t do that. People are chasing those 300 clients constantly, but that’s a little risky. They are aging and they will age out of your brand. The key is to nurture that next generation of clients [who] will be inheriting trillion of dollars of wealth [with nearly $124 trillion in assets being set to change hands through 2048 primarily to Gen X-ers].”

How to attract those new clients, when AI could potentially eliminate a tier of people, who have worked their way into wealth:

R.C.: “We tend to move faster here in the U.S. in terms of technology more than anywhere else. Years ago, I had a conversation with [Hermès CEO] Axel Dumas in Paris. I kept pestering him about how we needed new systems and technology. He said, ‘Bob, whatever you do, do not let the technology overwhelm the experience.’ It’s true. We can have all of your personal information handy, but it’s what you do with it.”

Defining authenticity and craftsmanship:

R.C.: “In today’s age, you can’t fool the customer, especially the luxury customer. When you talk about authenticity, they know whether you really mean it and whether you live it. It’s all about culture. Every brand and company has a culture whether they know it or not. That culture is so important to driving the message to the consumer. If somebody makes the client feel really good, warm, and welcome, it’s very authentic. The client knows that and will come back again and again. If the person can’t explain the product or understand how it was made, that changes the whole experience.”

Keeping brand culture consistent:

R.C.: “It’s the people that make the company. They’re the ones that will continue to nurture the culture.“

How a new designer could impact a brand’s culture:

R.C.: “There’s aways a risk that you can lose it. But the culture is not so much about the product. It’s more about the person. A new designer can continue the culture or modify it by steering the culture in a slightly different direction. But it still goes down to the people. The people are creating the culture.”    

What exactly is a cultural brand?

R.C.: “Brands that are saying they are cultural brands are trying to look at culture as in art, design and fashion. But the culture I’m talking about is the people. That goes back to the emotional connection that you make with people and then your people will make that with your customers. It sounds so simple, but think of your own worst shopping experience. You think, ‘There is no culture here.’”

Early lessons:

R.C.: “My parents were very warm people. My mother was very strict. You always had to study, study, study. I started at Bloomingdale’s in 1977, and there were some really talented merchants then. I saw people screaming at people on the selling floor. But I thought, ‘It doesn’t have to be that way.’ I remember thinking, ‘If I ever get into a position of management, I’m never going to treat people like that,’ You don’t have to.”

Luxury boom price hikes:

R.C.: “There are various reasons for all of the increases. The consumer notices it. If you’re going to do that, you have to continue to meet the expectation. If you’re going to be at a certain level, the customer wants the quality, the craftsmanship and the experience.“

Looking ahead:

R.C.: “The future is really bright. You have a lot of wealthy people out there. You have this generation that is going to inherit this tremendous amount of money. It almost behooves us as brands to offer the best quality that we can offer and the best experience. By experience, I don’t mean that you have to fly people on this private jet to this major event and wine and dine them. I’m talking about the experience that they have with your team whether it’s online, in the store or at an event — wherever that might be. The experiential part of it is going to be more and more critical, as we move deeper and deeper into AI. That human touch is going to make all the difference in a world that is moving faster and faster.”

Keeping the human touch during expansion and attracting young people to the not-always-desirable retail sector:

R.C.: “It takes an extraordinary commitment. You’re doing it. You’re trying to look for and hire the best people. You’re training them, embracing them, and embracing that culture. People talk. And they talk about the culture. Good culture will attract the same kind of people. Like people attract like people — it’s a fact of life. It’s the training program, but also how somebody feels the moment they walk into an office or a store.”

Are luxury brands lost?

R.C.: “I don’t think the industry is shaky. Brands go through different phases, but the key is consistency. I loved what Matteo Torre [president of Ferrari North America] said earlier that we are obliged to do what we do and to do it as best that we can do it.”

Hermès’ collaboration with Apple:

R.C.: It took forever. Try to imagine the standards of Hermès and Apple and bringing those two together. It took a long time. That’s why it was so successful. It started between two people — Jony Ive and Pierre-Alexis Dumas. It was a simple conversation. Then it was a simple request and then it led to something else. It took many, many years.”

Can data be digitalized and personalized to enhance white glove service?

R.C.: There is an opportunity to digitalize this information and capture more of it. But again, it’s how we’re going to use this information. Recently, I read that by approaching customers and becoming very personal with them, AI can also help you influence their purchasing habits. But some customers already caught onto that and got very upset about it. They felt they were being very manipulated by it. Customers don’t want that, especially luxury customers. He or she wants to decide on their own, or with the help of their specialist in the store or online. Technology can be very helpful in capturing a lot of details and data. But it’s how we use that, that’s really going to be the key. With younger generations now, you’re already seeing the tide turning a little bit. They don’t want to give so much of their information. Look at the way that things are being hacked now. For all of the great things that AI can do, it’s going to do a lot of sinister things too. We have to be careful about how we approach it and how we protect consumers’ data.”

Earlier in the program during “Connecting Authenticity With a Global Clientele,” the designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee predicted there will be a move from the age of influence to the age of intelligence and then to an age of wisdom. “It’s going to be very important for us to discover that we need to be humans again. AI is going to disrupt that. But we are going to surge ahead and show the world how to create a luxury brand just be being human.”  

Noting how he has intentionally paced the growth of his $60 million label over the past 25 years, he said, “I’m a CFO’s nightmare because I don’t let the company grow…Growing a luxury brand is like building a 100-story building, you need a deeper foundation before you start. I am not building Sabyasachi for myself. I am building it for the future generations of India. I want it to last beyond my lifetime.”

David Yurman’s chief marketing officer Carolyn Dawkins flagged how consumers are getting into luxury “far earlier than ever before.” Describing the volume of young consumers, who understand and lean into luxury as “phenomenal,” she said they are fueling heritage content and are curating wish lists on Giftful that they share with friends and relatives. ”There’s a whole ecosystem that they are building,” Dawkins said.