MY LIFE, MY STYLE At home in London with Hannah Weiland, the founder of the Shrimps fashion label
The artful designs of the Shrimps founder Hannah Weiland are echoed in the charming furnishings of her Notting Hill home
‘I’m so sorry, but someone seems to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed,’ says the designer Hannah Weiland as she opens the door to her mews house. She is referring to her black and white miniature poodle Lionel McGruff, who is barking and running around the livingroom in circles. Weiland herself looks far more relaxed, dressed in Alexachung dungarees, Manebi espadrilles and a smockjersey top from her label Shrimps, the cult British fashion brand responsible for elevating faux fur into haute luxe. ‘We called him Lionel because we thought it was a sweet oldman name,’ she explains, ‘but it turns out he’s very naughty!’
Weiland attributes her love of animals to her childhood, which was split between houses in Maida Vale and Bradford on Avon. ‘I’d spend all my weekends and summers in
the country,’ she says. ‘We had lots of rabbits and guinea pigs and hamsters.’ Her other passion was art: ‘I had wonderful art teachers and they made us badges when we left school. Mine said, “It’s all about surfaces”, because I liked print and texture.’ She went on to read history of art at Bristol University, writing a dissertation on the Turner Prizewinning ceramicist Grayson Perry, entitled Frilly Frocks and Shocking Pots.
The idea for Shrimps (her childhood nickname) came to Weiland in 2013 when she was studying for a diploma in surface
textile design at the London College of Fashion. ‘I was trawling fabric fairs looking for swatches when I found the most incredible faux-fur material.’ Naturally, as an animal enthusiast, she thought it the perfect alternative to using the real thing. She bought enough to make a Breton-striped coat, which was spotted on her Instagram page by the model Laura Bailey. When Bailey borrowed one to wear at London Fashion Week, she was chased down the street by Natalie Massenet who wanted to know where it was from. Cue a bulk order from Net-A-Porter, and a 20-minute appearance by a powder-blue Shrimps coat in Bridget Jones’s Baby (Bailey’s partner Eric Fellner produced the film). With her bold use of colour and playful patterns, Weiland transformed the image of fake fur, and her creations were snapped up by everyone from Poppy Delevingne to Beyoncé.
The brand now has 91 stockists, including Dover Street Market, Selfridges and Matchesfashion.com, and has expanded to offer a full ready-to-wear range that features soft tailoring, pretty tea dresses and quirky knitwear. ‘We have factories all over
the globe,’ says Weiland. ‘I get the faux fur from Lithuania, our silk is sourced in India and I manufacture in Scotland and Italy as well.’ She has also just unveiled a stylish homeware collection with Habitat, using motifs from the Shrimps archive and inventive techniques to create hand-woven rugs, crewelwork cushions and digital-print bedding covered in doodled faces and make-believe creatures.
When she designs a new collection, Weiland always looks to art for inspiration. ‘I’m obsessed with Craigie Aitchison’s colours and I love Paula Rego.’ Shrimps A/W 17 was influenced by the textural redand-white checks of the artist Louise Bourgeois; S/S 18 saw a collaboration with the artist Faye Wei Wei; and Gertude Stein was the muse for Weiland’s latest collection. Stein’s dictum, ‘A rose is a rose is a rose,’ was echoed in the line, ‘A shrimp is a shrimp is a
shrimp,’ painted on the walls of the showspace. ‘It’s a geeky art-history reference but I kind of like that,’ she says. ‘She was an incredible patron – Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Hemingway all used to visit her house. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall.’
Weiland shares her own home in Notting Hill with her husband Arthur Guinness, scion of the brewing industry. Its open-plan living-room was once a stable; with its farmhouse kitchen sink, wood-burning stove and white painted floorboards it gives the impression of a charming country cottage. Cosy interiors echo her dreamy aesthetic, filled with witty modern art on the duckegg blue walls, and market furniture finds. The couple got married this summer in the grounds of Weiland’s family home, Belcombe Court. Lionel was there, of course, trotting alongside the pair as they left the church in a shower of confetti. The bride wore an ethereal silk georgette dress that she designed herself, adorned in handdrawn and embroidered motifs from the relationship. ‘It was white-on-white, so it’s not too obvious, but when you look closely you can see, for example, the logo of the Ship Inn pub in Bristol where we met; it was like wearing our history on the dress.’
You’ll normally find Weiland in a Shrimps jumper, vintage printed trousers from Rellik just off Golborne Road and flatforms. ‘They’re my go-to choice of shoe because I’m short, so they give me a bit of
extra height and I can happily walk to work in them for 20 minutes straight.’ Besides Shrimps, she favours Prada and Miu Miu, as well as the Danish brand Ganni, Comme des Garçons and Saint Laurent. She also loves to wear pieces made by her British contemporaries, including Molly Goddard, Ashley Williams, Simone Rocha and Christopher Kane. In the winter, unsuprisingly, it’s a different Shrimps coat for every day of the week. ‘I’ve got so many and they do take up a lot of space, but you can squish them together quite well,’ she says. ‘The good thing is that moths don’t eat them. They don’t find fake fur very interesting.’ More fool them…