British luxury accessories designer Anya Hindmarch is set to host an immersive installation for LFW.
Hindmarch announced last year that she would no longer be presenting her collections during LFW. She wanted to abandon the traditional biannual presentations in favour of a more consumer facing approach. Her goal was to allow the consumer “to really engage with the brand’s creativity on and offline”.
In February, the designer placed chubby heart balloons in many of London’s famous landmarks. The balloons started floating on Valentine’s Day, and were moved and placed in 29 different locations around London for a week after.
This LFW, Hindmarch plans to continue the “chubby” theme by installing an experiential chubby cloud exhibition. The world’s largest beanbag, inspired by the cloud motif in her A/W18 collection, will be placed in the Banqueting House in Whitehall. Visitors will be able to climb on and sink into the giant squishy cloud whilst observing the iconic Rubens ceiling.
When talking about the concept, Hindmarch explained that the event was an opportunity to amplify the brand and engage directly with consumers. She said in a statement, “we thrive on creativity and new challenges. Our chubby hearts over London campaign last season was a lovely way to engage the public beyond the runway. The chubby cloud continues this theme and is our first proper experiential event for the public during London Fashion Week, which coincides with the global launch of our Autumn/Winter 2018 chubby collection. We can’t wait to immerse people in this world, and hope that they will leave with big smiles on their faces.”
The event will take place over three days from September 14th16th. It will feature a series of talks from guest speakers such as Anya Hinmarch herself and Claudia Winkleman. There will also be a number of activities for customers to take part in including bedtime stories from Poppy Delevigne, morning meditations by Happy Not Perfect and choral lullabies with London Gay Men’s Chorus. Yana Peel will also lead a discussion about body image in art, alongside Marc Quinn and Victoria Sin.
An onsite café will allow guests to enjoy chubby-cloud inspired cakes and a pop-up shop will be selling the new collection, alongside limited edition products created exclusively for the occasion. The event will be ticketed, with prices ranging £7.50£15 and all profits will go to the Historic Royal Palaces.
Get ready to enter cloud nine!
