Sleeping bags, but not as we know them
‘No one needs another bag,” says Anya Hindmarch. True, but not something the average bag seller would admit. She’s not average though. For one thing she’s a woman – not so common in the world of bag design. She gets the weird warp-thinking so many of us succumb to every time we fall in love with a bag and she understands the desire to colonise all those compartments and pockets. “That perpetual hope that the right bag will change our lives, organisationally at least.”
Psychologically there’s a lot going on with bags: they’re one domain over which we can exercise control, which is why it feels so bad when everything in there degenerates into soggy biscuits and mushy, lidless lipsticks. And sometimes the right bag does ease the quotidian slog, just a little. “Right now,” observes Hindmarch, “we’re all into smaller bags, because our phones mean we don’t need to tote around cameras, big wallets, books…” What we want, she says, is comfort bags – individual but not flashy. “Bags that feel so soft, they’re almost like pillows.” Enter her range of strangely appealing quilted Chubbies, which she claims, could double as a genuinely comfortable cushion – handy, given most of us are exhausted. Hindmarch knows that feeling, although it doesn’t seem to slow her down. She was the first bag designer to stage a catwalk show (no one thought bags alone could hold a stage). Not content with a simple show, next Friday she kicks off London Fashion Week (it’s that time again) with two days of events
focusing on wellbeing and sleep. The public can buy tickets – Hindmarch has long thought the traditional industry-only approach to fashion month is outdated and elitist.
They’re all in the 17thcentury Banqueting Hall in Whitehall. It’s quite a place, with a sweeping staircase, lots of twirly mouldings and a Reubens on the ceiling. King Charles I commissioned it and was then marched beneath it on the way to the scaffold.
Beneath the world’s largest indoor inflatable cloud (why not?), Claudia Winkleman and Poppy Delevingne will be reading bedtime stories. Nutritionist Amelia Freer and Vassi Chamberlain will be discussing how food affects our wellbeing, Derek Blasberg will be in conversation with Edie Campbell, and on Saturday there’s an interview with the woman herself, which I’ll be hosting. I’ll be asking her for tips on everything from staying on top in a competitive world to how to get more sleep. If you’re burning to ask her advice, send me an email – and I’ll see what
I can do.