While it would be crassly superficial to judge anyone by their bag, in the instance of Emma Hill the quilted black Chanel Mademoiselle 2.5 sitting next to her in the bar of Claridge’s, merits careful analysis. This is the former creative director of Mulberry, who dramatically parted ways with the brand two years ago, after a controversial – and, in the event, disastrous – change in its direction.
Hill has just launched her own bag brand, Hill & Friends, at London Fashion Week. Speculation about it has been fomenting ever since Net-A-Porter.com ordered the collection from sketches alone. A sneak preview suggests the deceptively simple shapes and chunky proportions are not dissimilar to the bags she oversaw at Mulberry. No bad thing. Net-A-Porter has such faith, it put part of the collection online on Monday, just 24 hours after the show.
Amazingly, Hill is not carrying one. “I don’t want it to go stale on social media before it’s even officially launched. I’m old school. I want the big reveal on Sunday to be a genuine event.”
She bought her Chanel bag in a defiant gesture on her last day at Mulberry. “The Mademoiselle is so classic, it’s almost a [very expensive] blank canvas. It’s a non-statement-statement.” To which she has added a Karlito bag charm – one of Fendi’s furry gonk replicas of Karl Lagerfeld, which she bought after a boozy lunch. Dangling from the elegant 2.5, it’s a quintessential Hill combo: classic and playful.
Hill is steeped in bag semiotics. Before she joined Mulberry in 2008, she worked for Gap and Marc Jacobs, where she was instrumental in turning the bag into an emblem of female status that helped fuel the growth of every major fashion brand from the late Nineties onwards. At Mulberry, she oversaw the launch of the Alexa, the Del Ray, the Mitzy… smash hits, all three. Yet she insists she never sets out to design an It-Bag. “That would be the kiss of death.”
Where does this gift for churning out hits come from? “I’m Welsh.” So is Georgina Fendley, her partner at Hill & Friends. The pair met at Mulberry, where Fendley was brand director. “We’re fiery, dogged, hate failure and very proud,” says Hill.
She still won’t comment on the reasons for her Mulberry “divorce”, as she calls it. It was painful. She was on gardening leave for a year. “I’d like to say I spent that year learning a language or doing charity. But I didn’t.” She did, however, spend time with her nine-year-old son, Hudson – assuaging any pangs she may have felt for returning to work in the USA when he was five weeks old.
Rumours that she was unhappy with Mulberry’s decision to abandon its core customer and join the other luxury brands in a stampede upmarket seem about right. At Hill & Friends, bags will cost around £1000. Hardly cheap, “but it’s an honest price for bags of this quality”.
She wasn’t tempted to sell £300 bags – fashion’s current sweetspot, and a major contributor to Michael Kors’s billions. “That market’s already brilliantly catered for. Also, you have to produce a £300 bag in China. And if you’re talking commercially, £1000 is another sweet-spot.”
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Advertise with NZME.As well as Net-A-Porter, the line will be available from hill&friends.com and they're planning two shops in New York and London. But still. Launching a baby brand in the face of so much competition from global leviathans…
“I know, but sometimes when you’re small you can be nimble,” Hill says. “Not everyone wants a bag they’ve seen absolutely everywhere.”
Like Mulberry, Hill & Friends manufacture in Somerset. “We’re especially proud of producing in the UK. Believe me, they’re beautifully made.” Suede linings are bonded, the Italian hardware contains 0.4 microns of gold (apparently that’s high), the aesthetics sleek, simple, and despite or because of the familiarity, sneakily convertible. There are six designs in 45 permutations, and inevitably they all have names, each preceded by the adjective “Happy”.
What makes a happy bag? “Function and aesthetics. Whenever people ask me which kind of evening bags I like, I say, are you kidding? Who has time to change bags when they’re going out? All our bags are designed to be worn in several ways.”
Given the company’s tiny size, the level of expectation is, says Hill, intimidating. All she can do is design instinctively. “Every good bag I’ve ever done has been partly a response to what I want, and partly about addressing what’s practical but also makes your heart flutter.”
