'Keep your aspirations in your handbag' - Anya Hindmarch interview

IF EVER a fashion accessory came to define the conspicuous overconsumption of the mid-Noughties, it was the luxury designer handbag. The "must-have" bag that changed with every season, seen on the arm of Angelina or Jennifer or Keira or Kate, quickly became an iconic symbol of extravagant wealth and female status. Even with price tags that ran into many hundreds of pounds, the "It Bag" was lusted after by all – and bought by many who simply could not afford it.

Well, those days are gone. That "overheated-frenzied handbag moment" is over, says, of all people, luxury bag designer Anya Hindmarch. The 1,000-plus bag, without which even the averagely fashion-conscious female could not exist, is finally dead – killed off by the credit crunch, impending recession and the gas bill.

"I think it was overheated and pretty disgusting, actually," Hindmarch goes on. "There was a point at which the queue of people waiting for one particular handbag – not necessarily one of ours – was ridiculously long, and then it's not even a luxury experience, it becomes a mass market. The whole thing was getting a bit revolting. I've always thought the really, really expensive bag, which then becomes completely unfashionable the next season, is a bit dishonest and I think customers are more intelligent than that."

It might seem trivial to discuss handbags while pension funds are dwindling and jobs evaporating but, in decades to come, social historians will surely credit the end of the mass-produced yet hugely expensive It Bag with a return to financial sanity. Certainly Hindmarch, who has more than 30 outlets around the world selling beautiful bags from 300 to 1,400, talks about the "inevitable shrinking of the market" with great seriousness and not a little anxiety.

"I'm not a silly, trite fashionista," she says at one point, as if anyone might mistake her hard business head and a company worth a reported 20 million.

Indeed, 40-year-old Hindmarch has her finger on many pulses, a key influence in both fashion and social circles. This year, for example, she masterminded the annual Conservative Black & White Ball – she counts the Camerons as friends – and was credited with transforming its hitherto stuffy image.

After 22 years in the bag business, Hindmarch is as well connected as any well-to-do businesswoman with a bulging BlackBerry. Yet she is totally self-made, having struck out in business at 18. In person she is more down-to-earth than any self-celebrating fashion bod I've ever met.

"You have to fight like hell in business," she says, "Like an alley cat, sometimes."

How worried is she for Britain's fashion economy? "It's a bad analogy, but there's that same feeling of shock people had after 9/11. When banks start to go bust, you feel a bit like your parents are splitting up. "There's that air of unreality; all your foundations are rocked. I've had (staff members] saying, Anya, should I take all my money out of the bank? And you think, Christ, that would be a disaster – but maybe, you know, you should.

"I've been through two recessions – though not as bad, I suspect, as this one is going to be. You have to stay on the wobbleboard and maintain your composure. At this point, you have to be better than everyone else. The (luxury fashion] market is going to shrink and even those who haven't lost money will feel it's a bit distasteful to go out and spend (large amounts]."

In the new era of austerity, instead of buying four or five handbags a year, Hindmarch expects women to buy one and "treasure it" – or to use last year's, or even to dig out something much older. Neither will we be quite so susceptible, she thinks, to the power of the celebrity endorsement. "I don't like the sheep mentality," she says. "I mean, of course, it's human nature but I don't like it, I think it's stupid."

A 675 Hindmarch bag called The Cooper, of course, was an It Bag itself, as worn primarily by Angelina Jolie.

"The It Bag was a hugely powerful marketing tool," she says, "and certainly we had bags some people called It Bags, but generally it's not what I stand for as a brand. What's important to me is lasting design, something you can hang on to for your grandchildren."

The desirability of Hindmarch bags has had one much-publicised consequence, however. Seven times this year, one of her shops or warehouses in London has been "ram-raided" by thieves, with a loss of more than 100,000 of stock. "Yeah, we're hot as hell in the underworld," she says, very wryly indeed. You can tell that Hindmarch, who has now installed cutting-edge security kit in all her shops, is beyond mere frustration on this.

On other subjects, though, she is not uptight at all. I'm impressed by her ability to cope with five children on top of the business, the fundraising, the socialising. When Hindmarch was 25, she "inherited" three little children by marrying James Seymour, a fashion finance director whose first wife died during an operation. She has since had another two, so the family now ranges from five-year-old Otto to 19-year-old Hugo (with Tia, 18, Bert, 16, and eight-year-old Felix in between).

So where does she stand on that great debate on the Ruth Kelly question, the minister who resigned to spend more time at home?

"Look, there are times when I'm not a great businesswoman or a great mother. In some respects I wish I had it in me to stay at home and be completely happy. I think it probably is slightly better for kids to have a mother around the whole time."

Of course, she has a nanny, and an office just five minutes' drive from her home. Yet Kelly's timing does have merit to it, she says.

"I think they probably do need you more as they get older. But children are quite selfish, too, they'll tell you when they want more of you."

Hindmarch is clearly no fan of Kelly's politics. She was very much a teenager of "Thatcher's Britain" and admired it hugely. Her entrepreneurial parents – her father had his own plastics business – were influential, and she describes her dad, who sits on her board, as "my harshest critic".

"I think I was inspired by that time (the Thatcher years], that culture of 'get out there and get going'. It was the time of Tie Rack and The Sock Shop. Sophie Mirman (the founder of The Sock Shop] is a good friend. Sometimes I see her and think: 'Wow, you were my hero, I studied you in business studies A-level, you were like God."

Will business students study Hindmarch? Well, at least one of her bags has gone down in retail history. In April last year, 80,000 people queued outside branches of Sainsbury's for her I'm Not A Plastic Bag cotton shopper – undoubtedly the green phenomenon of that year, and a project that has influenced high-street supermarkets since. It's fascinating to hear how petrified Hindmarch was about this move beforehand.

"Someone accused me of using it as a marketing ploy but, you know what, it categorically wasn't. It was a real risk for me, you know, partnering with Sainsbury's." Yet she clearly won her dare.

For all her common sense and sheer niceness, however, I do have a problem with Anya Hindmarch. If there's a moral imperative for all of us to buy and use cotton shopping bags, aren't there, equally, plenty of good reasons not to spend 1,000 on a pretty holdall? It's a question guaranteed to wind up a luxury handbag designer. If few can afford it right now, shouldn't everyone find something better to do with that much money?

She thinks I'm being nave. "Yes, it's decadent, but I also believe that doing nice things for yourself is important – as long as that's not all you're doing. I couldn't bear never to give to charity. I couldn't bear to spend Imelda Marcos sums on shoes and handbags. But I do what I can, I do my bit and if I have a handbag to cheer me up, that I will love and keep for a long time, then fantastic. I think if you lose aspiration, then you lose the will to live."

Which is all perfectly eloquent, and fair enough. But I know there won't be a 1,000 handbag under my Christmas tree this year.