5 designers commemorate 20 years with NET-A-PORTER

“I’ve watched NET-A-PORTER grow throughout its various offices,” says Anya Hindmarch, as she vividly describes first seeing the black-ribboned boxes and her earliest meetings at the current west-London headquarters. “Walking through the latest office for the first time is something I’ll never forget, as it’s something you’ll rarely see again in a lifetime. When something goes from nothing to 100, in kind of three minutes, it’s incredibly exciting to witness.”

According to fashion legend, the British designer was the first brand on the site. Renowned for her irreverent aesthetic, some of Hindmarch’s most popular pieces on NET-A-PORTER over the years have included her cult leather stickers that add a flash of personality – from winking faces to cartoonish monogramming – and her exquisitely crafted handbags. It would also be remiss not to mention her crisp-packet-inspired evening bag, which has become a red-carpet favorite. “It’s the idea of making the everyday extraordinary,” she states, simply.

In the past, Hindmarch has also eschewed actual fashion shows for immersive experiences, including erecting ginormous chubby hearts to float over (or squish into) London landmarks during Fashion Week. Her tricks always have soul, and she often uses fashion as a platform to encourage social change. In February, for example (prior to coronavirus lockdown), she closed all her London stores for three days and filled them with 90,000 used plastic bottles (the number that goes into landfill every 8.5 minutes) to highlight the scale of single-use plastic pollution. She simultaneously launched her ‘I Am A Plastic Bag’ tote – which is cleverly crafted from recycled plastic bottles and coated in repurposed windscreen laminates – exclusively on NET-A-PORTER. Having the opportunity to shout about important projects such as this is something Hindmarch really values. “We can launch a project with NET-A-PORTER and it will tick all the minimums so that we can do exclusive things, which is very rare,” she says. “It’s a lovely moment where, because of the scale, we can do something special.”

Another of Hindmarch’s most noteworthy collaborations of late is with London hospitals, including the Royal Marsden, for which she created washable and reusable PPE gowns during the coronavirus crisis – proving that her often light-hearted brand can also have a more serious impact and is ultimately weighted in kindness.

“It was a massive collaboration of newness from the customer, the retail side and the designers,” says Roland Mouret as he reminisces on his nascent years with NET-A-PORTER. At the time, the designer was part of a new generation, having launched his eponymous label in 1998, and was perceptive to the spotlight that this new digital venture shone on him.

Growing up in a French mountain village near Lourdes, Mouret worked in his father’s butcher shop from a young age, and it was here that he became acutely aware of the importance the relationship with the customer plays. With no formal design training, this dialogue was a key component to his success, and joining NET-A-PORTER opened that conversation up to an entirely new, global audience. “It’s a strong education for someone who never went to fashion school; I learned a lot through online retail,” he says. “The first thing I learned with NET-A-PORTER was the need to be consistent, because if someone on the other side of the world orders something, they’re going to rely on a certain level of trust – trust in the size, the quality, the finishing… Delivering the same product to different women around the world with different body shapes, from different cultures and different religions meant you really had to adapt yourself.”

Renowned for his intuitive draping technique, one of Mouret’s most famous designs is his now-iconic Galaxy dress. Debuted on his spring/summer 2006 runway, using a stretchy, second-skin material, the meticulously sculpted midi frames the shoulders, waist and décolletage, creating the ultimate hourglass silhouette. Three years later, he launched a line of equally figure-hugging, ‘rainbow’ mini dresses with NET-A-PORTER. “Working with NET-A-PORTER was quite revolutionary at the time because nobody was doing collaborations with brands yet. I’d never done mini dresses, but I spoke with the team and they said, ‘Why don’t you do mini dresses? We have a strong market for them.’ We tried a lot of things together and it was fantastic because everything was still in development and every idea felt right to try. I was quite happy to be part of the young generation who were there to make it happen.”

Still deeply in tune with his customer’s needs, nowadays Mouret has fixed his attention on sustainability. As well as using core fabrics that are fully eco-friendly for FW20, and collaborating with sustainable accessory brands, he aims to be carbon-neutral within the year.

Diane von Furstenberg is an undisputed grande dame of fashion. Having launched her eponymous label in 1970, the Brussels-born designer secured her sartorial legacy with an uncomplicated but universally flattering wrap dress in 1974. It was exactly this iconic piece that kickstarted her journey on NET-A-PORTER, when the team discovered the brand at a fair in Paris and picked up a version that looked and felt like denim. “It became a huge seller,” recalls the designer, who is also famed for her graphic prints and exotic colors. “I think, in the end, what people remember are the prints. Prints are my training, my strength and the identity of the brand.” By this stage, von Furstenberg’s vivacious wrap dresses were already considered vintage-shop gold, but a whole new generation of women were just discovering her allure. “It’s hard to explain timelessness,” she says. “Sometimes, just as you think it feels old, it feels right again. That’s the mystery of fashion.”

The 73-year-old has lived many lives and, as well as being a designer, mother and grandmother, has launched a cosmetics and fragrance line and founded a publishing company. She’s written a number of books and has another, called Owning It, on the way. “You’ll have to wait until January, but Owning It is the secret of life,” she explains coyly. The designer is also a passionate philanthropist and has become a leading voice for female empowerment: she sits on the board of Vital Voices, an organization that champions female leaders; she set up the DVF Awards in 2010 to celebrate women who support other women; and, in March of this year, she launched her In Charge with DVF podcast series, on which her guests include pioneering women such as journalist Elaine Welteroth and actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas. “The time has arrived for me to use my voice, my experiences, my knowledge and my connections to enable other women to be the women they want to be,” says von Furstenberg.

Now, one of her closest protégées is set to follow in her footsteps, as her granddaughter, Talita von Furstenberg, launches her one-year-old TVF for DVF line on NET-A-PORTER this summer, starting a whole new chapter in DVF’s NET-A-PORTER story. “Talita is her own woman; she has wanted to do this since she was a little girl. I look forward for her to take over.”