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About Hayden-Harnett:

Brooklyn is blowing up with Hayden-Harnett and their unique, beautifully constructed handbags.  Designer Toni Hacker, and her business-partner slash boyfriend, Ben Harnett, are making a mark with their ever-expanding business.  Started in 2005, Hayden-Harnett almost immediately went from selling canvas bags on consignment to wholesaling their luxury leather line, with custom-molded hardware and printed hardware in many well-known stores in major cities, including Japan.  Toni grew up playing in several rock bands and she brings her Southern breeding plus rock sensibility with her years of handbag design to the young company.  Toni and Ben, who has a diverse background himself, share their passion for form, function, travel, vintage finds, and a rock and roll spirit.  Together they give us stylishly edgy bags, while continuing to expand their brand to include apparel as well as opening a retail store in Brooklyn.

Stylehive: How has your background helped to shape the way you design?

Ben Harnett: This is more a question for Toni, as she’s the design genius behind everything we do. But I can answer in general - we both come from a non-traditional fashion background.  She studied sculpture, architecture and product design.  I studied painting, Greek and Latin.  We both worked in different areas and came at fashion design from odd angles.  I think it’s given us both a lot of perspective on people’s needs, and really caused us to focus not just on beauty in a sculptural and aesthetic sense, but also, and very importantly, on usability, and practicality.  I think anyone who looks at one of our bags, after being amazed by the beauty and quality will come to realize it’s an object made for use - pockets, adjustable straps, built to be worn and loved.  The same with our dresses, there’s pockets in just about every one.  We don’t stand on ceremony.
I think being outside of the mainstream also made us pretty fearless. We are absolutely committed to trying new things, and going in any direction we feel is right, and not being swayed one way or the other.

Toni Hacker: Well I think Ben said it all.  I started out making products and spaces for people to use, like ATM kiosks and storefronts—and later I worked designing products that were made in tens and hundreds of thousands of units at a very low price.  So I really was forced from the beginning to think about the customer, and also to try to craft something beautiful and useful at a very low price.  I met these challenges better because of my diverse background and now when I design I still think of it in these terms.  It also helps me to take risks, because I never studied fashion design, I’m not restrained by what everyone else has done or is doing.

Stylehive: Have you always wanted to design, and how did you get started? What inspires you?

Ben: I can only tell you that I think Toni’s inspired by just about everything under the sun.  Whether it’s a book of Norwegian Folk Tales she found on my bookshelf and took for her own, or the latest new music she dug up on an obscure indie website and filled both her and my iPod with, surreptitiously, or our trip to the Cloisters, or Brittney Spears’s public performance art… or a box full of bakelite earrings we found in Kentucky. Toni tells me a story about her grandparents, who owned a small 5 and dime type store, and how when she was a little girl, she used to take these white sneakers they sold and cover them with her own designs and make a little hangtag for them and sell them to customers.  I guess she’s always been designing one way or the other.

Toni: I can’t believe you told that story!  But it’s true.  For Fall, we wanted to take everything in a really new bold direction - the overall look of the line is definitely more glamorous, but a bit rock’n’roll romantic with modern shapes and exaggerated use of chains and hardware. Silhouettes are much more structured and defined than in past seasons. Materials range from luxe liquid silver anaconda to deep merlot, yam, and eggplant leathers. Black is a focus color in the palette as well as metallic silver and dull gold. Hardware is exaggerated and cast with tonal ceramic overcoat colors. Mood is decadent, yet restrained. Focus on details such as unique stitching and function of straps and interiors. Patent is still hanging around, but definitely understated. We have a laser-cut suede lace that is very romantic, graphic, and raw. As well as being trendy and innovative in your design, you are also socially conscious.

Ben & Toni’s Stylehive picks: haydenharnett

Hayden-Harnett’s Website: haydenharnett.com

There’s more!  Click below to read more of the interview...

Stylehive: Tell us about how you are raising awareness about global warming.

Ben: Toni and I, both coming from rural backgrounds and economically depressed areas that are slowly losing their environmental riches, have always been very environmentally conscious.  We both did what we could, but after having launched Hayden-Harnett, and seeing how many people’s attentions we could get, we realized we could do more to make a change.  Toni was greatly affected watching Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and she designed a beautiful print which we decided to make into a tote bag. The “Friends of Al” tote promotes a green message, and is meant to have other people asking “what’s it all about”—in addition to raising awareness, it’s a perfect tote for carrying your groceries home, which saves from having to use disposable bags.  And to cap it off, we decided to make the price affordable, and donate $35 from every bag to actually do something about global warming.  $10 plants 10 trees at americanforests.org, which actually absorb people’s carbon dioxide emissions.  Additionally, we donate to charities that educate about global warming, including stopglobalwarming.org and the Pew Climate Change Initiative, as well as to groups that preserve forestland.

Toni: There are a lot of other charities we’re interested in.  We really want to make the world a better place.  Right now I’m looking into donating fashion items to women who are coming into the workplace out of shelters.  We’re also passionate about arts education in schools.  Where I come from, art in schools is virtually unheard of, being the first thing cut out of the budget.  Without art classes, and exposure to great art, I don’t know where I would be today.  But Global Warming...yes, it’s very important to me. It was 73 degrees in NY yesterday and today it’s snowing. There’s a problem. The entire planet needs to work to find a solution and reduce and reverse the amount of damage we’ve already caused to our environment...stop being so greedy and try to give back as much as we take. That’s all we have to do...be respectful and give back as much as we take (and break some corporate fingers).

Stylehive: Tell us about your new apparel launch.  Did you encounter any difficulties?

Ben: The biggest difficulty is getting people to look at our apparel when they knew us just as a handbag company.  When we launch our retail store this month, people will see more that we’re not just about handbags.  We’re a design company.  We’re interested in designing things that people use and love, and promoting other people’s designs. We had a good friend Sonia Agostino and she was excited to try to design some outerwear for us.  We liked the results, and asked her to go ahead and create an entire line.  Then it was “damn the torpedoes” ... full speed ahead.  We absolutely love the way it turned out.
We’ve gotten a great response, and have been overjoyed to have our apparel featured in Harper’s Bazaar and Elle Magazine. We really wanted to make clothing that was versatile, and I think we have done that.  I’m most impressed with our dresses and outerwear, and I already have a half dozen pieces in my own wardrobe. Fall is even better… Our new Brooklyn Design Shop will be fantastic...everyone who comes in can see every piece and understand how it all relates together...what we’re really trying to do.  How has your blog helped your business?  Without our website, we’d never have made it.  It allows us to interact directly with our customers, and really communicate with them.  Our blog is just an extension of that.  Let people know what we’re thinking about, and hear back from them.  Since we’ve expanded so quickly, one of our greatest disappointments is we just don’t have enough time to update our blog and photojournals and newsletters as frequently as we should.  We are trying to be better, because without our customers, we really aren’t anything.  I think our website, our blog, our myspace page, our photojournals—it’s all updated by Toni and I, and is very personal, and I think it really differentiates us from a lot of people out there.

Toni: Exactly. It’s how we communicate our ideas most directly…

Stylehive: How is it working with each other, as business partners and in a relationship?

Ben: On our “About Us” page Toni made a joke - she says she likes “making problems” and she had myself say that I like “solving problems” - but we’re both problem solvers.  However there is a truth in there - I think we make great business partners because we really complement each other in so many ways.  Toni has an amazing design eye, and a feeling for things, and I think I bring a lot of web savvy to the mix, a level head, and a good business sense.  We go back and forth on everything, and really get into deep discussions and the result I think is great.

Toni::  We just can’t stop creating things.  Ben is a great help and I think he’s actually pickier than I am about things.  He’ll notice flaws in the production that I don’t.  We couldn’t have done this alone.  I think of all the people I know who have started businesses on their own, and I would never want to do that.

Stylehive: What’s in the future for Hayden Harnett? 
Ben: Wouldn’t you like to know! We are opening a retail store in Greenpoint Brooklyn, which will carry our handbags, accessories, apparel, as well as art books, housewares, La Compagnie De Provence Marseille soaps, vintage sunglasses, glass jewelry, and many other things.  We are launching a nylon and leather travel collection, featuring passport holders, travel wallets, great nylon totes, all in April.  Our fall collections of handbags and apparel is 10 times better than anything we’ve done to date.  And… well I won’t say it, but we are discussing shoes…

Toni: Top-secret! We must maintain the element of surprise for our peeps… BUT, I will say that it is worth the time to come into the HH Design Shop! We opened on Sunday, 3/25. Ben and I designed the space ourselves, down to the shelving. A labor of love and it exemplifies what we stand for.
The HH Design Shop is FILLED with not only every piece in our apparel and accessory collections, but amazing jewelry pieces (some handmade by me!), home goods, books, apothecary, stationery, vintage jewelry and sunglasses. Guaranteed fun!

Ben & Toni’s Stylehive picks: haydenharnett

Hayden-Harnett’s Website: haydenharnett.com

Hayden-Harnett Design Shop
211 Franklin Street
(at NW corner of Franklin St and Freeman St)
Greenpoint, Brooklyn 11222

(t) 718.237.0447