‘I always like to show off the wrists' — how to dress stylishly for summer

Times

2 days ago

'Every time I leave the house,' Wiggy Hindmarch says, 'at least one person will stop me and ask me where what I am wearing is from. And so I tell them it's my own brand, Wiggy Kit. And they always say they are going to go away and shop.'
I would suspect Hindmarch of exaggeration if it weren't for the fact that my own experience, whenever I wear her clothes, is the same. There is something about what she does that is not just quietly distinctive but highly covetable. It's a cross-fertilisation of the masculine with the feminine, the boho with the preppy, I think. Then there's the melding of fresh-looking lines with eye-catching detailing, plus the fact that she is all about 'flattering proportions', the better to, as and where required, 'trick the viewer'.
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Her goal, she continues, 'is to create standout pieces that don't shout. You don't look as if you are trying too hard, but 'bloody hell, that's an amazing shirt' or 'wow, that is such an incredible skirt'. I don't want ever to produce something boring. There is always a twist.'
When I wore one of her signature styles recently — the sarong shirt dress, in a chocolatey linen (£395, wiggykit.com) — for a lunch with a group of front-rowers in Italy, every single one of them wanted to know (sure enough) where it was from. 'Is that Alaia?' one asked. Er, nope.
Another of her signature styles is the tuxedo trapeze dress with which she launched the brand ten years ago. At once gentlemanly and girlish, it has been retooled to mark the anniversary in crisp white on blue (£395, wiggykit.com).
The brand may have branched out successfully into year-round dressing in recent seasons, yet summer remains Wiggy Kit's happy place. The main reason Hindmarch, 48, founded the brand in 2015 was because, she tells me, 'people weren't doing the kind of clothes you could wear in London as well as abroad'.
'It was a bit ridiculous that the things you bought for two weeks in Ibiza you couldn't then wear to work or to a school event. I didn't want two summer wardrobes.' If you haven't yet nailed your wardrobe for the months ahead, a pop-up shop opened on the King's Road last Wednesday in London. (The final day of trading is June 8.)
'I am a woman of a certain age, with insecurities, so I am always thinking everything through,' Hindmarch continues. 'The proportions are always very carefully considered. Whether you have a long torso or short legs, you will appear to have the ideal shape. And though my aesthetic is quite covered up, I temper that with revealing the right amount of skin in the right places.' The right places? 'I always like to show off the wrists.'
Hindmarch's initial inspiration was the fashion she saw when she moved with her parents to Rhode Island on the east coast of America when she was a teenager. 'It's less temperate there, and you have to go about your day to day and operate professionally in baking temperatures.' People also 'tend to dress up more than we do, and they also use a lot more colour'.
Her father's 'preppy style' was another early touchstone. In the ensuing years she has also found herself turning more and more to 'interiors books and travel magazines. I think, 'If I lived there, if I inhabited that space, what would I want to be wearing, how would I want to be?' I don't really look at what other brands are doing. I just focus on what I am doing.'
Handily, when it comes to warm-weather research, Hindmarch — who is married to the designer Anya Hindmarch's brother — spends four months of every year on Harbour Island in the Bahamas. Among her high-profile fans is the designer India Hicks, another resident of the island, as well as the model Claudia Schiffer.
The glorious existence in both the Bahamas and London that she showcases on Instagram, and the clothes — own-brand, of course — that she wears while enjoying it, are a key to her success, she says, though she claims this is not entirely for the reasons you might imagine. 'My videos push sales hugely. A gorgeous model doesn't do much for sales, but when people see me wearing something, they see what it looks like in real life, and they think, 'Oh, I get that now.''
Some customers save up to buy one or two pieces a year, others order multiples for their houses across the globe. 'One woman orders for London, Hong Kong and Sicily, another for New York, the Hamptons and Palm Beach.' When the brand does its once-yearly 72-hour flash sale, 'We have people online from 7am.'
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Wiggy Kit's success tracks a wider phenomenon, namely the rise of what's known in the trade as resortwear. Hindmarch has her theory on that one. 'Resortwear has become so important to many brands, I think, partly because it's what people really want to buy. We buy things for winter slightly begrudgingly, we know we just have to get through it, but everyone is excited to buy spring/summer.' Indeed.