Handbag queen Anya Hindmarch: I’m guilty of not having a good work-life balance

Her clients include Duchess of Cambridge Gigi Hadid, Reese Witherspoon and Kendall Jenner – but handbag designer Anya Hindmarch tries to stay out of the red carpet spotlight her clients draw.

As a designer of bold bags – some have eyes, others look like crisp, glitzy pouches – she’d rather run her business than be noticed by the public.

In fact, when she was younger, the environmentally conscious entrepreneur had neurolinguistic programming to help calm her down when speaking to industry groups and students.

“It was a very special thing that came out of the trauma of having failed a singing competition in school when I was about 13,” she recalls; nerves got the better of her on stage and she dried up.

The problem worsened as her business grew and she found it difficult to breathe for fear of speaking in public and ended up hyperventilating.

“I felt stupid and embarrassed about it. I read about it and the best advice I could find was to breathe in a paper bag, but it really wasn’t practical.

NLP has worked, but even now she doesn’t like to be in the limelight, preferring to be at home with the family. “I don’t live to go to fashion nights. I prefer to be at home in my kitchen, ”she reveals.

Hindmarch, 52, has spent years juggling running her designer handbag empire with raising five children (stepmother of three, mother of two).

She was 25 when she met her husband, James Seymour, who was a 37-year-old widower with three children under the age of four. She says she knew the instant she met him that she was going to marry him and that she also fell in love with her children.

“It was very instinctive and you have to follow your instincts. I fell in love with him and I fell in love with the children and I felt really good. And I was 25 bold, I started my business young.

“At one point we had five children in five different schools,” she recalls. “It was complex. Very difficult. We must have invested a lot in aid at this point [they had an au pair]. The logistics were incredibly complex, with five sports days and five parent-teacher evenings. It was quite full.

“I am certainly guilty of not having a good work-life balance,” she continues, admitting that she does not turn off easily at the end of her working day. Seymour also works in the company but can log out more easily, she reflects.

But confinement gave him precious time with his family. “A lot of people, if they were being honest, would say that just taking a moment to get off the treadmill and take stock will benefit them.

“For me spending time with the kids was really special, and not traveling and being constantly busy was pretty important to me, both creatively and personally. It was nice to go for a walk with the kids every morning at 7am – it was really special, and I probably won’t have that again.

“I would be sitting at the table doing my business and the children would be sitting at the table doing their work. I was learning what they do and they heard more about what I do.

“They understand that they have always had a working mother. This is what they have known. It has pros and cons, but it doesn’t matter.

Hindmarch has now written her guide to memory and self-help, If In Doubt Wash Your Hair (the first piece of advice she gives to busy women), an uplifting ‘manual for life’ that offers practical tips and solutions. reports, tips on how to help women feel better about themselves, plus trivia about how she overcame her own obstacles and doubts.

She is keen on keeping responsible fashion at the forefront of her brand, with environmentally friendly processes and products that remain extremely important to her. “It gets me out of bed every day like, ‘How can we make a difference in our little way? “How can we communicate and do our part?”

“It’s about everyone doing as much as they can as fast as they can. We’re not perfect, no one is, but we want to do our part.

In 2007, Hindmarch ran a campaign called “I’m Not a Plastic Bag,” the bag tagline, to raise awareness about single-use plastic.

“Some 80,000 people lined up in one day in the UK [to buy the £5 canvas tote on the day of its launch] and it went on and on all over the world. Thirty people went to hospital in Taiwan because there was a stampede [for the bag]. This has made a real difference as it has helped to drastically reduce the use of single-use bags.

“It was just using our platform to communicate that single-use plastic is bad.”

Then, in February 2020, the company launched “I Am A Plastic Bag” in response to an estimated 8 billion tonnes of plastic on the planet, she explains.

The campaign created a bag made from plastic bottles, covered with recycled windshields. The brand’s London stores were closed for three days during London Fashion Week and were filled with 90,000 used plastic water bottles, partly as a protest and partly as an art installation. “The bag [which costs up to £895 for a tote] sold very well. Each is made up of 32 half-liter water bottles.

The environmental message must be pushed further, she stresses. “We’re not tied to the fact that if you buy something, use it and throw it in a landfill and keep doing it, we’re going to end up in an unbearable mess. If you were to bury everything you throw in your own backyard, you would quickly stop doing it.

Hindmarch started her business at the age of 18 straight out of school, opened her first store at age 24, and by 2015 had 58 stores in 10 countries including Japan, China and the United States. United States.

Today, she agrees that the most difficult thing for women to deal with is juggling work and family.

“Every day there is a tough roadblock when you run a business or can’t seem to be successful at what you do, or have a problem with one child or another. This is the reality and you learn to understand that these are normal problems.

“I think it’s important to accept that you can’t do everything and try to focus on the things you’re good at,” she suggests.

She readily admits that she has never been there for the children’s homework and that she is not a cook, but that it is important not to feel guilty about leaving the children in someone’s care. else when you go to work.

How did it feel to face three young children when she first met Seymour? “It was a baptism of fire, but I was young and naive enough to know I wanted to do it. They were three beautiful children that I just wanted to hug.

“Becoming a mother-in-law was easy for me in a way. It’s about being sensitive and working with all of my amazing in-laws. We found our way by being very honest.

She and Seymour live and work together, but it works, she says. “We laugh a lot together – we almost sit next to each other at work, and then we’re home together. He doesn’t take me seriously at all. It’s like being with my best friend all day. I feel really lucky.

When in Doubt Wash Anya Hindmarch’s Hair is published by Bloomsbury, priced at £ 18.99. Available now.