Anya Hindmarch: designing with a purpose

Few designers combine humor and seriousness as well as Anya Hindmarch, whose ability to combine important sustainability messages with witty designs and even wittier concepts has made her a real force to be reckoned with. Here the British fashion designer explains what it means to design with purpose.

Fashion with a purpose is something we really care about. Fashion can actually serve a very important purpose, in that it can influence people in terms of the way people feel – something as simple as influencing our mood, making us feel happier or changing how confident we feel. It’s pretty important that way. Another way is that it can encourage people to behave more sustainably or less wastefully.

Luxury is not very luxurious if it causes harm. There is an absolute requirement on our part to look at sustainability… not just looking at how can we reuse waste and keep it out of the landfill, but how can we design from the ground up so that we don’t need landfills and things can go back return to nature. Nature is brilliantly designed – you don’t see an apple in landfills because it breaks itself down and ultimately feeds the soil. So my idea was to make something that behaved and mimicked nature. Two years later, our mission hasn’t changed and I believe there is a greater need than ever. We’re seeing weather patterns change and that’s pretty scary. So there is a real need to come together and find creative solutions that work.

My North Star is always common sense. It’s quite difficult to navigate the sustainability world because everyone is still learning a lot. There are innovative ideas that people think are very important, but then realize that they may not be so sensible after all. We want to make sure that we can have a sustainable business, one that employs people and does the work that we do, but also behaves in a sensible way. And that is very important to me.

I wanted the (Anya Hindmarch) Village (on London’s Pont Street) to be a real destination. We used to have many stores around the world and I wanted to have an authentic place where I could work on all the creative concepts. And it’s really established now and it’s bringing people from all parts of the world. Should I create that somewhere else? Don’t know. It’s hard to have the same local impact when you’re so far away. But we’ll see. I never say never.

Read more: Chubby Hearts – A showcase of love and the power of design.