EPISODE 114 FEATURES ANYA HINDMARCH
Anya Hindmarch founded her eponymous label in 1987, when she was just 19. Since, then it’s grown into one of luxury fashion’s best loved accessories labels, known for its sense of humour, joyous designs, irreverent shows and dedication to craftsmanship.
Anya is also a non-Executive Director of the British Fashion Council and an Emeritus trustee of both the Royal Academy of Arts and the Design Museum. In 2017 Anya Hindmarch was awarded a CBE in recognition for her contribution to the British fashion industry and has received several notable industry awards including a British Fashion Award.
But while that’s all clearly very awesome indeed, it’s not why we’ve got her on the show this week. No. We’ve got her on the show because she’s a woman on a mission - to persuade people to rethink single-use plastic, and to embed circularity into her design thinking.
“I Am a Plastic Bag” by Anya Hindmarch
NOTES
I’M NOT A PLASTIC BAG was a game-changer in 2007. At the height of it-bag mania, here was a cotton tote, designed to fight single-use plastic shopping bags, that cost just five quid - and had them queueing around the block. According to the British Retail Consortium, in 2006, before the I’m not a Plastic Bag project, the UK used 10.6 billion plastic bags. By 2010, this figure had dropped to 6.1 billion. According to Anya, Sainsbury's cut their bags by 58% in the 2 years that followed the campaign, giving out 312 million fewer bags in 2009 than in 2007 and saving 13,200 tonnes of virgin plastic over two years. See the news clippings on anyahindmarch.com
2020’s version - I AM A PLASTIC BAG - soft-launched at London fashion week in February, and is now available for pre-order. Made from recycled plastic, with leather handles & trim from a Gold Standard Working Group Tannery -read about the process here.
GRUNDON is the UK's largest family-run waste management provider, and is focused on sustainability. Think closed loop, an anaerobic digestion plant that turns food waste into biofertiliser and Energy from Waste facilities that divert non-recyclable waste away from landfill and turn it into electricity.
IT TOOK 90,000 USED PLASTIC BOTTLES TO FILL ANYA HINDMARCH’S 3 LONDON STORES. THAT JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE THE NUMBER OF PLASTIC BOTTLES PURCHASED GLOBALLY EVERY 6 SECONDS.
TRASHY The photographs of people surrounded by a week’s trash that Clare mentions are by Gregg Segal. See them here.
MATTER OUT OF PLACE. Here’s what the flooded Celine store in Venice looked like:
VANITY FAIR’S GREEN ISSUE was May 2006. The cover featured Julia Roberts sitting in tree, with Al Gore, Robert F. Kennedy Jnr and (for reasons unknown) George Clooney. Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth came out the same year.
WHO INVENTED THE PLASTIC BAG? Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin created them back in 1959. Plastic bags were patented by a company called Celloplast and by the middle of the 1960s, they were actively replacing paper and cloth alternatives in Europe.
PLASTIC IS USEFUL in many circumstances - for keeping food fresh for example. The problem is its overuse and abuse.
Could sustainability be a matter of COMMON SENSE ? Ban Ki Moon thinks so. “At its essence, sustainability means ensuring prosperity and environmental protection without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. A sustainable world is one where people can escape poverty and enjoy decent work without harming the earth’s essential ecosystems and resources; where people can stay healthy and get the food and water they need; where everyone can access clean energy that doesn’t contribute to climate change; where women and girls are afforded equal rights and equal opportunities,” writes the former Secretary General of the UN. "The big idea? Sustainability is common sense. "There is no country or society where sustainability is not important or necessary. We all share the responsibility to work for a sustainable future and we will all reap the benefits.” Read the rest here.
MUSIC is by Montaigne, who sang this special acoustic version of “Because I love You” from her album Glorious Heights, just for us.
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Clare & the Wardrobe Crisis team x