The bag lady who made Mulberry a hit

IN the future, parents will sit their children on their knees and tell them that, once, it was all so different: once, women weren't very interested in handbags. "Too right," says Emma Hill, creative director of Mulberry, fondling a medium-sized bag that goes by the name of Margaret. "When I was in my second year at Ravensbourne College, Harvey Nichols set us a project to design a bag and I was like, handbags? Why would we bother with handbags?" She's about to tell me how she took a job designing bags for Burberry - back in 1992 (long before its glamorous makeover) because, in the depths of that recession, it was all she could get - when a waiter arrives bearing trays of sandwiches and scones. It's a very Mulberry proposition; the jolly, slightly self-referential Englishness of tea (not much gets eaten), served in the cosy grandeur of the Claridge's suite that Mulberry booked for our interview. Mulberry's third-quarter results posted a 79 per cent jump in revenue. Unlike many luxury brands, Mulberry's rude health doesn't rely exclusively on the Asian market, which has been relatively untouched by the financial crisis; its biggest market is Britain. Forty-four of its existing 82 shops (including the recently opened flagship on New Bond Street) are in Britain, as are 70 per cent of its sales. There's still plenty of room for growth globally. Within 24 hours of Mulberry opening a store in Westfield Sydney at the end of October, the boutique had sold out of coloured bags and clutches, leaving only a few black bags in stock. Tonight Hill will host a Mulberry garden party in Sydney's Darling Point to celebrate the brand's success in Australia and showcase the new collection. Women care very much about handbags. They care particularly about Mulberry handbags, so much so that it is hard to go out these days without encountering a Mulberry or two along the way. This glib-sounding claim is actually extraordinary. These are not Topshop purchases but bags that sell for $600 to $1200, more for the exotic skins. The most popular, the Bayswater, a sort of deconstructed, robust version of Hermes's Birkin, is that grail of which accessories companies dream: a bag that has become a classic, reconfigured each season in different finishes and aspired to by teenagers and their mothers alike. "Yup, Kate Moss has one and so does my son's grandmother and that's part of Mulberry's success," says Hill. "But also it's like a stealth luxury. It's not showy, but it makes you feel good." It wouldn't be strictly accurate to claim that Mulberry's long climb to it-company status is down to Hill alone, however. Since the reclusive Christina Ong and Ong Beng Seng bought out the original founder, Roger Saul, Mulberry has been on a steady assault on the fashion highlands. For the company's chief executive Godfrey Davis, "it's about the product". First, there was its collaboration in 2002 with Luella Bartley and Stuart Vevers, which culminated in the Gisele, the first bag to place Mulberry on the style radar after decades in which its slightly huntin', shootin' and fishin'-inspired scotchgrain bags were regarded with the affectionate disdain normally reserved for a nice but smelly labrador. The Luella was followed by the Bayswater, designed in 2002 by Nicholas Knightley, the then design director. But it is the 40-year-old Hill, who joined the company as creative director in 2008, who has proved to be a hit machine (most recently with the Alexa). Her arrival was not without drama, however. Two weeks after she joined Mulberry, Lehman Brothers crashed. "Fantastic timing," she notes drily. Her response was the Mitzy, a soft tote that weighed significantly less than the usual Mulberry product and that, perhaps as important, cost about $600 as opposed to the normal $1000. The Mitzy, with its lower, made-in-China price point, was an important psychological marker for the brand that had hitherto prided itself on manufacturing exclusively in Somerset. The company manufactures 70 per cent of its bags in Spain, Turkey and Asia, not all of it through choice; the Somerset factory cannot cope with increased demand, says Hill. "We wouldn't manufacture the pound stg. 695 bags in China, that seems wrong. But I think if you're paying pound stg. 390 there's an understanding that they probably will be made there."