Handbag designer Anya Hindmarch is renowned from Boston to Beijing for chic, and occasionally cheeky, accessories. (Her eco-friendly I'm Not a Plastic Bag tote was a delightful bit of both.) Here the busy British mother of five takes a break between shop openings — she's introducing ten stores in the next few months — to talk about her favorite places, her secrets for a smooth flight and how she's raising her kids to be global citizens.
What is your earliest travel memory?
I remember going to Morocco — I was about six — and being amazed by how foreign it was: the smells, the heat, the shapes. Those exotic trips you take when you're young really feed your brain. I now refer back to a lot of the shapes and colors I discovered on them when I'm designing. I feel a responsibility to travel with my kids and feed their brains in the same way.
Since then, which other countries have surprised you?
I took a boat trip through Greece and a bit of Turkey the summer before last, and the colors were astonishing. I found these old peasant dresses that are great as beach cover-ups and became obsessed with the evil-eye talismans, those beautiful blue pendants.
Do you have any travel rituals?
There's a big difference between traveling for business and for pleasure, and lately I'm doing a lot more travel for work. I always try to fly during the day; I don't want to get up at four. Even if I travel overnight and arrive at nine in the morning, as is the case when I go to Tokyo, somehow I'm in an okay pattern. I view flying as being almost like a Sunday: I catch up on my to-do lists and build in some personal time, because if you think about it, it's kind of blissful not having access to your e-mail or telephone.
Speaking of Tokyo, which places there do you especially like?
I've been spending a lot of time at the Park Hyatt. The hotel starts on the thirty-ninth floor of the Shinjuku Park Tower and takes up the top fourteen floors, way high up. It's like being in a space station. And my favorite restaurant in the world is in that city: the tiny Kami-ya, which translates as the Housewife. It's in the Roppongi district and is run by four women; it's part of a movement in which women are beginning to manage their own restaurants. The menu is different every week, and it's handwritten in a book, completely in Japanese. The food there is some of the most exquisite I've ever eaten.
What advice do you have for traveling with children?
Too many connecting flights will always be hellish. When flying from London to Mustique, for instance, you've first got a seven-hour journey to Barbados; then you have to wait and get on a little plane. Any more than that is too much.
HINDMARCH'S TOP SHOPS
Evolution, New York
Hindmarch collects boxed butterflies. To find the mounted and framed winged treasures, she heads to this unusual taxidermy shop. 120 Spring St.; 800-952-3195; evolutionnyc.com.
LASSCO, London
Hindmarch calls LASSCO (London Architectural Salvage and Supply Company) "the premier furniture salvage shop." She should know. The architecture aficionado named one of her handbags the Lautner, an homage to the noted midcentury American architect. 30 Wandsworth Rd.; 011-44-20-7394-2100; lassco.co.uk.
Pineider, Florence
Even at nineteen, Hindmarch had impeccable taste that could be seen in her smallest choices — like her first set of business cards, from this Italian stationer. 13/14r Piazza della Signoria; 011-39-055-284-655; pineider.com.
Porselli, Milan
As respected among dancers as Repetto, though its name may be less generally recognized, this "old-fashioned ballet-shoe and dance-wear store" is among Hindmarch's haunts whenever she's in the Italian fashion capital. Piazza P. Ferrari; 011-39-02-805-3759; porselli.it.
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