Hobbs

Hobbs was founded in 1981 in Hampstead, London by Yoram and Marilyn Anselm. Marilyn, who had studied sculpture at the Central School of Art and Design, started the business after growing frustrated with the quality of clothing available to her in the early 1970s and deciding to design her own. The company was named, according to Marilyn, after her favorite brand of horsebox -- an unusual origin for a fashion label's name that has stuck through more than four decades of trading. Hobbs launched first as a shoe label rather than a clothing brand; a womenswear clothing line followed in 1986, five years after the shoe business began, and it was that clothing side that eventually came to define the company. The Anselms' two daughters, together with Yoram's brother Ronnie, joined the business and helped grow it through the 1980s and into the early 1990s, by which point Hobbs had become an established choice for middle-market British womenswear -- clothing pitched between high-street fast fashion and higher-end designer labels, aimed at customers dressing for both office and social occasions. The brand today positions itself around that same premise: clothing and accessories inspired by British town-and-country dressing rather than seasonal trend-chasing.