India Hicks is not an easy woman to introduce. A mother, model, prolific fundraiser, award-winning designer, author and television presenter, her list of accomplishments seems inexhaustible, with each neat label of career proving reductive unless considered in the light of her full spectrum of successes. Richard Rosser and Clare Macaulay managed to sneak a peak into the whirlwind world of India Hicks on one of her recent whistle-stop visits to Oxford.

Daughter of the eminent interior designer David Hicks, granddaughter of Lord Mountbatten, India currently lives an exotic existence in the Bahamas, but is strongly tied to (and frequently visits) Oxfordshire, where two of her four children attend boarding school. From the opening of our interview, an indication of her firm determination that must have garnered such success is evident. Control drips from each deliciously articulated word, and when informed of previous business successes to have been interviewed by B4, India’s immediate response to a list of male only names is ‘Not many women’.

Like the country her name borrows from, India seems to embody the paradoxical partnership of both the exotic and the British – the former manifested in her Island lifestyle, the latter exemplified in her position in line to the throne.
Aptly then, her home in the Bahamas mixes Peter Jones’ floral fabric and ‘tea at four’, with a beach location and tropical surroundings. India’s unique ability to reconcile such apparently opposite influences in one body seems to have spilled over into and formed the foundation of success for her designs. It is a combination the consumer has responded to eagerly and one that India looks set to take advantage of further, with new exciting projects already firmly on the horizon.

Since 2006, India has worked as a creative partner on two hugely successful projects with Crabtree and Evelyn. Her collections scooped coveted prizes at the CEW awards (‘Island Night’ won the CEW Best New Celebrity Fragrance award in the UK whilst ‘Island Living’ scooped Best New Fragrance at the UK CEW Awards in 2008). The level of sales far surpassed expectations; so much so that India has to catch herself almost complaining at the problems such high demand caused. She breaks a long explanation of the consequent challenges they faced, ‘it caused enormous problems with forecasting and shipping…maintaining stock was very, very difficult’, with a ripple of laughter. ‘But please don’t get me wrong, you want sales to surpass forecasts’.

India insists on how important it was for her to be engaged and driving every stage of the design, and how in some areas (for example with the fragrance itself) it was a real ‘learning curve’. Leading on from this, her relation of the process is consistently framed in organic images, (she describes Crabtree and Evelyn as having its ‘roots firmly in the botanical world’), and she is thankful the press and public have discerned that she is not an artificial face for the product, but nurtured its growth.

“My fingerprints were all over the collections… Here was a collection that had been designed and given birth to by somebody, I hadn’t just come along and thought ‘mmm that smells nice, what’s in it?’

The organic and honest product is one that Hicks argues the current buyer demands, and she ensures her products are weighted with her self and not just her name in response to this.

“With the recession affecting all of us, customers really look before they spend. And I think they want something that really is of value.”

India places value in such parallels as the ‘green message’ of her product echoing her own eco-friendly habits on the island, such as ‘air drying’ her clothes, watering the garden only ‘when God feels like it’. The products, she stresses, have all the synthetic dyes / colourants removed, and everything is recyclable and reusable. However, in an unusual mismanagement of her language, India passionately declares that such attention to detail ensures that products ‘transcend the messages of her life’, presumably rather than ‘transmit’.

Amusingly, considering the weighty carbon footprint her frequent flying has probably endowed her with (India describes herself as permanently being ‘bloody jetlagged’ from all the air miles she racks up) the slippage is probably apt.

Her work on the collections pivoted on her home in the Bahamas exemplifying how her home on ‘The Island’ seems to seep into all of her work. ‘Island living’ and ‘Island Night’, as their names suggest, derive their scent and style from Bahaman influences (Casuarina is ‘inspired by the island breezes that sweep over our veranda each day...orange blossom, palm leaves, and salt air’ and Spider-lily after her favourite island flower a ‘fragile white beauty that grows by the edge of the sea’).

Her interiors book in 2003 'Island Life' was followed with ‘Island Beauty’ a lifestyle fitness/beauty book published in 2005. Even her own children seem to be products of the island - in her blog she writes ‘I have produced four little island savages. Sometimes I worry about this’. Her inspiration from island life evolves her already acute sense of aesthetic gained both in front of and behind the camera (she modeled for a number of years and has a photography degree – in which she gained honours), and in growing up under what she describes as ‘the imposing eye of David Hicks’. Her regularly updated blog is scattered with images of her children, home and colourful array of animals (a Japanese fighting fish being a recent arrival).

The relationship between her design and the Island is a reciprocal one. Whilst the island organically moulds and influences her design, so the influence of her work extends upon the island. In 1999 she and her partner designed ‘The Guest House’, a retreat in the style of an old Caribbean plantation house which was subsequently built by local carpenters and tradesmen, whilst her charity work gives much needed support to a local school. Her work and the island are seemingly inextricable, her boat she notes, is ‘named after my Crabtree and Evelyn fragrance...Spider-Lily’, but this is in turn named after her favourite island flower.

India Hicks proves that a balance between motherhood and career success is possible. Though she admits she does find the question of balancing the two intimidating and to some extent, unanswerable. “I think as a woman it’s more interesting when other things are going on as well as being a mum. Although, understandably, working and being a mum to four pushes you to the absolute limit, I do somehow manage to keep the scales even, albeit with tremendously hard work and some sacrifice.”

India freely declares she has quite a strong feminist attitude, explaining that in business she doesn’t want to be treated any differently. “I’ll just get on with it.” She asserts. It was this attitude that prompted her to travel on a worldwide three-month promotional tour for her Crabtree and Evelyn fragrance without mentioning to the company that she was pregnant. She did not want to be ‘mollycoddled’. Yet the mollycoddling of India Hicks, (who also bungee jumps, scuba dives and has run marathons) is something difficult to imagine.

When questioned about the future, India mentioned, but was unable to talk in detail, about two upcoming projects, another new collaboration with Crabtree, and a separate venture into jewellery design, but her voice hums with excitement at the mere whisper of them. If her own words are anything to go by, “One of the things I have learnt over my working career is that if you are enjoying something, you do it well”, it would seem that the delight with which she viewed such prospective endeavours bodes only towards more success. Tracing her journey so far, this is not a difficult thing to imagine. Follow India on Twitter and Facebook – see: www.indiahicks.com or visit Crabtree & Evelyn on Carfax in the centre of Oxford.