Bags to riches: Anya Hindmarch interview Anya Hindmarch has travelled a long road to success. Her secret? Pure hard Thatcherite graft. When we talk about fashion it is often about surfaces - beautiful people with glowing skins, glossy bags, shiny shoes - but every so often something or someone more unexpected comes along, as a reminder of what might lie beneath those fine façades. And so it is with Anya Hindmarch, an attractive woman and designer of desirable handbags and accessories, but one imbued with a political conviction as profound as the determination that has made her head of an expanding international business, with 54 shops worldwide and an annual turnover well in excess of £20 million. Hindmarch's latest prize - as Veuve Clicquot businesswoman of the year - is lined up on a side table just beyond the reception of her headquarters in a converted stables in Battersea alongside several others (two from the British Fashion Awards, in 2001 and 2007, two more from Glamour magazine, and another from the Elle Style Awards). The office isn't grand - plain whitewashed walls, grape-hyacinth bulbs in zinc planters - but it hums with quiet energy, the tap of busy keyboards punctuated only by the occasional sound of well-spoken voices. READ: Anya Hindmarch Bespoke launches online I've known Hindmarch for more than a decade, but have never been to her office until now. We first met in 2001 when she raised a substantial amount of money for the Lavender Trust, a breast-cancer charity that I co-founded, with her Be A Bag launch (a range allowing customers to personalise their handbags with individual photographs). Since then I've seen her phenomenal energy at work for other good causes: Be A Bag has benefited 31 charities worldwide, and was followed by her collaboration with the grass-roots movement We Are What We Do, for which she designed a canvas tote bearing the environmental message I'm not a plastic bag. Hindmarch in the office with her husband. She is also a trustee of the Royal Academy and the Design Museum, a director of the British Fashion Council and a UK trade ambassador, while juggling the needs of five children, now aged between nine and 23. All of which goes some way to explain the sign that hangs behind her desk, saying scary. Not that Hindmarch is scary in person - she has the blue-eyed serenity and long blonde hair of a Botticelli angel, albeit one dressed in silk Stella McCartney and black Marni wedges - and her own explanation of the sign is that it is a message to herself and her staff that business is scary and to be taken seriously. READ: Anya Hindmarch - 'I'd label my children if I could' Nevertheless, it also serves as a reminder of Hindmarch's achievements since she started her company in 1987, at the age of 19, and the steely determination beneath her beauty. It therefore seems appropriate that beside the scary sign is a framed letter from her heroine, Baroness Thatcher, congratulating Hindmarch on her MBE in 2009. So here's the thing about Hindmarch: she is an unwavering Conservative, in a way that fashion designers rarely are (the only others with a marked political commitment are Katharine Hamnett and Vivienne Westwood, both of whom protested against Mrs Thatcher; Hindmarch, on the other hand, sent her a bespoke handbag with an inscription inside saying, 'From someone that you inspired'). By her own admission, this 'is pretty unfashionable', but it also explains her association with David Cameron, dating back to 2008 when she became involved in fundraising for the Conservative Party, organising a Black and White Ball that achieved the near-impossible triumph of making the Tories seem, if not cool, then younger and somewhat less staid. But her political beliefs were in place long before the Cameron era, and are at the heart of her identity as an entrepreneur; indeed, she is the embodiment of the phrase 'Thatcher's children'. Born in Essex in 1968, she was the second child of a self-made man who had left school at 16 (following the death of his father), and set up his own company. READ: Taxi for Anya! 'I come from an incredibly strong family,' she says, 'a lucky family. And I watched my father being hard-working, growing a business, and all the trials and tribulations of that. His business was to do with plastics - I think he invented the first plastic flower pot - and my mother helped him very much. She was having contractions [before my birth] while she was trying to type an invoice for my father. With the Camerons in 2008. It was from her mother, too, that Hindmarch inherited a love of handbags, in particular a hand-me-down Gucci that she cherished from the age of 16, 'a little one, with the jacquard print and a navy-blue pigskin trim'. From this small yet iconic totem she learnt the power of luxury goods: 'It's very tribal. It's about saying, "This is who I am. This is what I stand for. It's about showing what you love, about giving you confidence.' Clearly, the entrepreneurial urge was also powerful in her own tribe; her siblings - an elder sister and younger brother - have both set up businesses, as did her father's sisters. 'One breeds three and three breeds nine,' she says. But if her father remains her mentor - and he still sits on the board of her company - then Mrs Thatcher was an equally potent role model. 'The reason I'm interested in politics, and the reason she's my heroine, is that I remember growing up in the Bay City Rollers era, the three-day weeks, and it was all a bit...' She pauses, making a sound between a sigh and a groan, and miming sagging shoulders. Thatcher, in comparison, seemed to her to invoke the spirit of success when she came to power in 1979. She was someone who was pro-business, and she gave everyone a chance. The memories I have of that time are of people at school buying British Gas shares in their lunch hours, and privatisation, people buying their council homes... It was about ownership, owning your own shares, owning your own life, not hanging on to some annoying uniony thing that controls you, being your own person - and this was an exciting and liberating message. She left school at 18, with A-levels but possibly dyslexic, and without the academic zeal to go to university. Instead she set off to Florence, to learn Italian and to discover more about the handbag industry. Because here's the other remarkable thing about Hindmarch: she had a vision of what she wanted to achieve when she still a teenager. After hearing a sixth-form talk by an old girl who was working in brand management, 'I went back to my desk and drew a shop with bags in it, and my name on the front, and it was very clear to me.' Arriving in Florence without a word of Italian, she combined language classes with a thorough investigation of the local leather markets, and came across a drawstring leather duffel bag that she thought would sell in England. Still only a teenager, she persuaded Harpers & Queen to feature the bag as a readers' offer, managed to find a factory to fulfil the orders, and then ploughed the £7,000 profit into her fledgling handbag company. Model Claudia Schiffer carries one of Anya Hindmarch's creations. Between 1987 and 1993 I was on my own, at my kitchen table, which was quite tough. I was living with a friend in London, just off the Fulham Road, and it was hard to crack it. I see a lot of people at the same stage now, and a lot of businesses are lost at that stage. Then the Italian factory that I was using started to copy my designs, and sell them to Harvey Nichols. And it was hard to get the quantities right at the beginning - 50 of this, 50 of that - so I ended up moving the production back to the UK, and began to work with a lot of craftsmen, some of whom we still work with. If Thatcherism was at the heart of her ambition, then a passion for local craftsmanship was - and is - equally important. This might sound an unlikely mix (not everyone shares her belief that Thatcher was the saviour of British manufacturing), but Hindmarch's flourishing bespoke business is living proof of her conviction. Indeed, she is at her most animated when she talks about the jewellers, trunk makers, enamellers and other highly skilled artisans who are integral to her designs. 'I'd rather spend an evening with craftsmen than with fashion folk any day, if I'm absolutely honest. They're often very clever, very modest - and the work they do is spectacular.' There is no doubt that celebrity endorsement has helped the brand - Claudia Schiffer was an early advocate, as was Diana, Princess of Wales ('she would pop into our first shop on Walton Street, without any bodyguards, and she was very lovely, very low key. She always used to refer to [the Anya clutch] as her "cleavage bag," because she would use it when she got out of the car to protect her modesty'). Diana, Princess of Wales was a fan of Hindmarch's bags. But the fairy dust of celebrity has never been more important a component to the brand than hard graft. Hindmarch's early years as a solo operator were, by her own admission, 'a baptism by fire', but crucial to her understanding of the nuts and bolts of the business. I was taking the orders, doing the research and development, the delivering, the production, the PR, the packing. It was fantastically tough, actually, but I can still pack a box faster than anyone else in the office. In the midst of this maelstrom of work, she was catapulted into a new family at the age of 25, when she met James Seymour, 12 years her senior, and a bereaved father of three young children under four. 'I knew the moment I met him that I was going to marry him,' she says. They remain a remarkably united couple, who have worked together - with Seymour as finance director - since she was pregnant with their first son (now about to turn 12; their youngest child will be nine in June). We lie in bed together all night, and drive to work together, and sit in the same office together all day. It's probably a relief for him that I've gone upstairs.' She is referring to last year's rearrangement, whereby she became the brand's chairman and creative director, having appointed James McArthur as chief executive - a strategic move, given the latter's experience at Balenciaga, a label that grew rapidly under his guidance. McArthur seems confident about the future potential of the company. In his words, 'Anya has an extraordinary and very rare mix of great creative talent and acute business sense. Couple this with a high-quality business that is profitable (over 25 years!), does not need painful restructuring and is much smaller than the resonance of the brand, and you're on to a clear winner.' His confidence is echoed by others in the industry. Natalie Massenet, who has seen Hindmarch's sales rise through Net-a-Porter, describes the collections as 'always spot-on in terms of what women want', while Alexandra Shulman, the editor of Vogue, says, 'The brand inspires loyalty because people have a very clear idea of it and they identify with Anya the person.' A style from the latest Anya Hindmarch Collection. As for Hindmarch herself: by nature upbeat, she is too much of a realist to be complacent about the future. After surviving several recessions - and thriving by producing pieces that are the antithesis of disposable, throwaway fashion - she is also aware of the delicate balancing act needed to keep her brand desirable. Hence, perhaps, her reaction when I ask if she is a guest at the Camerons' kitchen suppers. 'No, not at all,' she replies briskly. 'Do I know those people, do I see them, yes, but I'm not at the kitchen suppers, I'm not at the heart of it. Do I think they're doing a good job, yes, I absolutely do, though no government is perfect... And if I'm vexed about something, if I'm cross about employment law or apprenticeships, then I'll shout about it, and that's my role as a trade ambassador, to give some honest feedback.' Right now, given the 'omnishambles' of the government's recent mishaps, Hindmarch is almost certainly a better advertisement for David Cameron than he is for her; and I suggest that she might be a more likeable candidate for political office than many others (Anya for mayor, perhaps?). But she's having none of this. 'I'm not sure I'd be any good at it. I think you have to learn to play all sorts of games as a politician, and I am not a game player. At this point, a firm note comes into her voice, as she adds, with some emphasis, 'So, back to handbags.' Does she look scarier? No, but the lady's not for turning...