myfashionlife
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/lifestyle/article2332719.eceIt's just a bag. All right, so it's a tote bag designed by Anya Hindmarch, the queen of Bagland. A bag that retails for £5 but is now changing hands for up to £200 on eBay. A bag so hot that it was chosen as the official goodie-bag for guests at the 2007 Vanity Fair Oscar-night party. A bag that proclaims, on the cream canvas exterior between its grosgrain trim: "I'm Not a Plastic Bag." But a bag, nonetheless: something to carry groceries in. Not something, one might think, with the power to change the world.
Or is it? Hindmarch's creation is doing much more than making celebrities look good on the streets of New York, Paris and London. It is the must-have fashion accessory of the year - and the most successful endeavour yet by We Are What We Do, a non-profit British campaign group that has set out to change the world with baby steps. Suddenly, those baby steps are turning into a run.
We Are What We Do has published two books since its birth in 2004. The first, Change the World for a Fiver, has sold 750,000 copies. The second, Change the World 9 to 5, released in September, is also recording huge sales. They list "actions" to improve our environmental, community and personal behaviour, such as "Smile and smile back"; "Turn off the tap while brushing your teeth"; and "decline plastic bags wherever possible". And now comes the bag.
We Are What We Do, formed by a community worker, David Robinson, and a financial PR, Eugenie Harvey, initially devised "100 simple, everyday actions that can improve our environment, our health, and our communities, and make our planet and the people on it much happier". But the organisation is not a charity. It is not an institution. It is, say its founders, a "movement".
Its leading lights met Hindmarch two years ago, and told her that the average person uses 167 plastic bags a year, and landfill sites cannot cope. Hindmarch was hooked: "It was before the fever pitch of environmental concern hit the press, and I was so impressed with their outlook, which seemed to be, 'Let's all do a little bit.'"
Hindmarch's "little bit" was to create the bag. "The key thing was to design something that people wanted. There seemed to be three ways through [the plastic bag] problem. You could tax people. You could make it cheaper to use the better bags - biodegradable bags - which I feel is probably the best end solution. Or you could make it cool to act differently and correctly. So I had to make a bag that was desirable."
She's certainly done that. There are only 500 special-edition bags in the world - all, it seems, in the hands of Hollywood A-listers - and the clamour for this latest must-have has hit fever pitch. The rest of us do not have long to wait; the totes will be on sale in the Anya Hindmarch London store and other fashion outlets by the end of the month, and in Sainsbury's in April.
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