News feed
For a business notoriously difficult to penetrate, Anna Hoang and the rise of her label Anna Quan seem like an overnight success story. But though it’s true her effortless aesthetic may belie all the painstaking work, and years of trial and error, involved in creating Anna Quan, it all really comes down to one thing: the perfect shirt.
“After a couple of false starts and unsuccessful seasons as a young designer, I realised I needed to create a core item that the brand would be known for and that people would buy season after season,” she tells GRAZIA. “The shirt was such a classic item, it was consistent with my brand values and how I wanted to position the brand as everyday but special.”
Once she nailed her secret sauce, the interest—and sales—came naturally.
What began as a hotly-discovered gem of the IYKYK fashion set quickly became household news, seemingly bypassing the traditional course of fashion brands to earn a place in wardrobes across the globe.
Now, after a decade-long chokehold on the industry, with fans in Margot Robbie and beyond, she takes a moment to step back and appreciate the journey.
While Hoang’s path to design success is not unheard of—she was pursuing a career in law when she realised it was not her calling—the designer’s agile sensibility towards her industry has enabled the brand to thrive where others have fallen short.
With more business acumen than most creatives you’ll meet in fashion, Hoang’s outlook is refreshingly practical. Guided by her brand’s ethos, she employs an almost reverse engineer approach to design, taking on what her customers want and figuring out how best to serve them.
“Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to showcase more and more of what the brand is about as I receive more customer feedback,” she says. “The brand is really here to serve customers and engage them on a day-to-day basis. We’re heavily influenced by customer feedback but also drawing back to the brand ethos and surprising people with garments they didn’t know they needed or wanted.”
Ten years on, the Anne shirt is still one of the best you can buy, but her signature luxe staples extend to knit dresses, two-piece sets, relaxed tailoring, and versatile evening wear. Among Hoang’s favourites include the Delfina dress, a loose strapless floor-length dress that has even won over many a bride-to-be. “It’s been an honour to see people choosing it as their wedding dress,” she says. “It was never designed as a bridal dress but accidentally became a wedding favourite.”
Showing for the sixth time at Afterpay Australian Fashion Week in May with a new collection, the designer’s tunnel vision desire to provide a functional solution for the contemporary wardrobe has paid off in spades over the last decade.
“The biggest win, I think, is being able to feel validated that there is that customer out there that values quality over quantity, longevity and timelessness,” she tells us. “This is a testament to being able to expand the brand across our ten years.”
Of course, in an industry as mercurial as fashion, staying on one path is a commendable feat. And while Hoang is certainly tapped into the ins and the outs of trends, she never lets any of it muddle her vision.
“If I am ever lost, I go back to the brand mission of making the ‘everyday’ special,” she says. “This is my North star.”
