Anya Hindmarch hosted a breakfast on the last day of London Fashion Week to mark the opening of her new concept store Air Anya, which takes its style cues from Seventies air travel and the pre-budget airline days of carriers like Pan Am and British Airways.
The shop has been designed to look like a luxury cabin, complete with airline seats, a check-in desk and displays that look like serving trays in a Pan Am shade of light blue. Those trays also appeared at breakfast and came with yoghurt, compote and granola cups, avocado toast and croissants with pats of butter in the shape of a smiley face.
Hindmarch said the airline concept comes from her love of being organized and in-control when she’s stuck in a metal tube, and very much not in control.
So she created trolley and travel bags, totes and vanity cases with lots of pockets which can be personalized with letters and inscriptions. The store is also chock full of leather luggage tags and passport holders, baseball caps, mugs and airline-themed pins that say “Pilot,” “Cabin Crew,” and “Air Traffic Control.”
The pop-up, on Pont Street in Chelsea, runs until April 6. It is part of a clutch of Anya Hindmarch stores dedicated to her bespoke home accessories, seasonal collections and the Anya Cafe in an area she’s dubbed The Village.
Hindmarch is going places in more ways than one. The designer and entrepreneur has just been handed a damehood for services to fashion and business.
She collected the honor from King Charles at Buckingham Palace earlier this month, wearing a bespoke blue Emilia Wickstead suit, and carrying a silver “crisp packet” handbag of her own design.
“It made me so proud to be British,” said Hindmarch, addding that she was received by the king in the throne room at the palace. “Everyone made me feel so welcome.”
She said that she and the king talked about sustainability, alternative materials, the many uses of nettles, and Hindmarch’s “I Am Not a Plastic Bag,” cotton tote, which was all the rage here when it first launched in 2007.
Hindmarch said she re-read the king’s book “Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World” before they met, and was glad she did. “He has always been an absolute environmental trailblazer,” she said.
