Anya Hindmarch has captured public imagination with her innovative products, designed specifically to curb our consumption of single-use plastic. However, she admits she wasn’t always so sure how to tackle the problem. ‘I’d been hearing about the environmental crisis for years but never understood what I could do as an individual until I read Change the World for a Fiver, she says. ‘The book contained 50 easy tips, such as turning off the tap while brushing our teeth. I saw that we could use the platform of fashion to change behaviour. If fashion can make someone wear straight trousers one month and flares the next, we’re pretty at good at communicating.’
With I Am A Plastic Bag, the brand’s mission has shifted from raising awareness to looking at the circularity of materials. During 2020’s London Fashion Week, Anya Hindmarch closed its London stores for three days, filling each with 90,000 used plastic bottles.
‘There are eight billion tons of plastic on the planet and when you throw a piece away, there is no “away”,’ says Anya. ‘Ninety thousand plastic bottles go into landfill every 8.5 minutes. I see bottles of water handed out at marathons, gyms and meetings, and I see how disconnected we still are from the horror of landfill.
‘We have to try and return to a simpler, sensible life in which we don’t buy cheap clothes and chuck them when we’ve worn them twice. Admittedly this is a hard circle to square as we’re trying to sell things and keep employing people. If people don’t have employment, then climate change slips down their agenda.’
After much research, the brand recently espoused real leather. ‘Alternative leathers aren’t the answer yet,’ Anya explains. ‘Vegan leather is often just plastic. Recycled leather is leather chips mixed with glue and plastic. Using real leather is no bad thing if cattle are sensibly reared and their hides responsibly tanned. Cattle contribute to soil health, so it’s more about going back to basics, when a hide is used as a by-product of meat.’
Anya believes there’s much to be learnt from the food industry’s transparency. ‘Coming clean about E-numbers blazed a trail,’ she says. ‘The luxury industry could introduce a traffic light system that made it clear which were the “red” products. And we could incentivise brands that use less carbon.’
Ever the innovator, Anya has launched a fruit and vegetable store at The Village and curated a range of bathroom products to decrease plastic consumption. ‘We have no choice but to keep pushing,’ she says.
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