Anya Hindmarch on curiosity, craft and the joy of getting it wrong
6th May 2026
Anya Hindmarch doesn’t talk like someone with a carefully burnished public persona. She laughs easily, changes tack mid-thought, and has a habit of landing on surprisingly practical truths just as you expect something lofty. It’s a rhythm that feels familiar – the same balance of playfulness and precision that runs through her work.
Nearly four decades on from founding her brand at 19, Hindmarch has accumulated plenty of titles – founder, creative director, CEO, author, advocate – but none seem to preoccupy her. What does preoccupy her is how things feel: to make, to use, to experience. That sensitivity, she suggests, is the thread that’s held everything together, even as fashion, retail and culture have changed almost beyond recognition.
Nearly four decades on from founding her brand at 19, Hindmarch has accumulated plenty of titles – founder, creative director, CEO, author, advocate – but none seem to preoccupy her. What does preoccupy her is how things feel: to make, to use, to experience. That sensitivity, she suggests, is the thread that’s held everything together, even as fashion, retail and culture have changed almost beyond recognition.
There’s a moment, early on, when she describes her business not as a job or even a brand, but as “a living thing”. Over the years, she’s learned that stepping back – even briefly – gives perspective, but stepping back in fully requires clarity. What matters, what doesn’t and what no longer makes sense in the world as it is now.
That clarity has shaped the brand’s current chapter, which feels noticeably lighter on its feet. Playful, yes – but also deeply considered.
Take her approach to physical retail. In an era where digital convenience is a given, Hindmarch is adamant that shops must justify themselves. “There has to be a reason to visit,” she says, simply. The answer, for her, isn’t scale or uniformity, but personality. Spaces that invite you to linger, to discover, to feel like something’s happening there – and nowhere else.
Her solution – Anya Village on Pont Street in London – was deliberately unconventional: a small constellation of spaces, each with its own focus and character. Travel. Lifestyle. Core collections. A café. And a constantly changing concept space that reinvents itself every few weeks. It’s not designed to funnel customers efficiently from A to B, but to encourage wandering – a quality she feels modern retail has forgotten.
She talks about shops less as commercial environments and more as places of hospitality. Hospitality implies generosity: being told the story, not just sold the product. She recalls her father buying a pair of shoes and being talked through exactly how they were made – the stitching, the construction, the care involved. The shoes weren’t rare. The attention was.
That attention, she believes, creates loyalty far more effectively than aspiration ever did.
It’s also why she’s so passionate about showing how things are made. In her bespoke space, customers bring handwriting – a child’s scribble, a note to a partner, a private joke – and watch as it’s turned into something permanent. Craftspeople work alongside you, not hidden away. You see the hours, the skill, the pride. “Once you’ve watched something being made,” she says, “you don’t treat it casually.” You keep it. You look after it. You attach meaning to it.
That idea – that longevity begins with emotional connection – runs quietly through everything she does, including sustainability. Hindmarch has been thinking about environmental responsibility for long enough to remember when it wasn’t a headline topic. She speaks about early projects not as grand gestures, but as attempts to use her platform sensibly – to amplify small behavioural shifts rather than declare big moral victories.
The now-famous I’m NOT a Plastic Bag began as exactly that: a way of encouraging people to refuse single-use plastic. What followed – queues, frenzy, global attention – still surprises her. But she’s careful not to frame it as a solution. Sustainability, she insists, isn’t a problem you “solve” once.
“Sustainability has to be common sense,” she says. Fewer things. Better things. Look after what you own. The kind of approach our grandparents would have recognised instinctively. She’s candid about the limits of perfection – businesses still need to function, people still need to be employed – but she’s clear that thoughtfulness beats spectacle every time.
If that sounds serious, it’s worth noting how often the conversation returns to joy. Hindmarch lights up when she talks about objects that start conversations – bags inspired by everyday packaging (think Berocca tubes, Nurofen packs and Rice Krispies boxes) and playful references that make people smile across a dinner table. They’re designed not just to be worn, but to prompt interaction. A comment. A laugh. A shared moment. Fashion as a social language, rather than a status signal.
Her collaborations follow the same instinct. She’s drawn to brands that carry nostalgia or cultural familiarity – things people already have a relationship with. The appeal isn’t shock value, but recognition – the pleasure of seeing something familiar, reimagined with care.
Underlying all of this though, is a theme she returns to with surprising openness: doubt. Not as something to overcome, but something to work alongside. Creativity, she says, is inseparable from uncertainty. During the quieter months of the Covid pandemic, that understanding found its way into her book If In Doubt, Wash Your Hair, a title born from a very small truth. When things feel overwhelming, sometimes the most useful reset is a practical one.
It isn’t advice so much as permission. Permission to acknowledge uncertainty without letting it stall you. To keep going, even when confidence wobbles. “Nobody ever feels they’ve got it,” she says, with a smile. Accepting that, she believes, is what allows you to do interesting things anyway.
By the end of the conversation, there’s no sense of a grand theory about fashion or business. Instead, what lingers is something quieter and more enduring: a belief in care over excess. In curiosity over certainty. In making things that are clever, useful and joyful – and trusting that, done well, those qualities speak for themselves.
And when they don’t? There’s always the hair-washing.
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