Anya Hindmarch: ‘Emotion is a female superpower’

The British fashion designer talks about the benefits of bringing emotion to the workplace in her book, ‘If in Doubt Wash Your Hair’

Put your own oxygen mask on first. Award-winning fashion designer, successful entrepreneur and mother of five, Anya Hindmarch knows a thing or two about stress — juggling 60 stores, design, PTA meetings, and her Instagram-ready civil projects can’t have been easy. For over 30 years, this queen of handbags, with fans like Kate Moss and the Duchess of Cambridge, has also kept customers going with her witticisms. But in her new book, If in Doubt, Wash Your Hair, Hindmarch, 53, embraces fear, self-doubt and self-care. Thus the oxygen mask reference at the beginning of this article, which is also chapter three in her book. The increasing focus on the self, and the quest for calm, could explain why self-help books are back in demand in the West. This includes the ‘part memoir, part manual’ hybrid by celebrities and influencers. According to NPD BookScan, a retail sales monitoring service for books in the US, the number of unique ISBNs in self-help went up nearly three-fold from 30,897 in 2013 to 85,253 in 2019. And modern customers no longer sound faintly apologetic about reading them. Recall the instant spike in interest last year when singer Adele recommended Untamed by activist and public speaker Glennon Doyle: “This book will shake your brain and make your soul scream,” she exclaimed on Instagram, crediting the source of her new-found ‘joy’.