Meeting Anine Bing in person, it’s easy to understand why women around the world have connected with her. Warm, magnetic, and full of life, our Issue 05 cover muse has built a global fashion business with her personal style at its centre. As we sit down at SK Steak & Oyster in Brisbane, I’m interested in getting to know the woman behind it. Anine has always known what she wanted. At 12, she was saving for her first apartment. At 14, she was travelling the world as a model. By 2012, she was launching a fashion label from a garage in Los Angeles. Today, her name sits above more than 30 boutiques worldwide

“Everything that has happened in my life I’ve manifested,” she tells me. As our conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that imagining the life she wanted was only part of it. Anine has spent years working towards that vision, building a business, raising two children, and finding ways to keep her other interests alive.

A world of her own

Since launching ANINE BING in 2012, the designer, based in Los Angeles, has attracted an international following with her wardrobe of vintage denim, oversized blazers, leather jackets, and classic staples. The aesthetic has remained consistent: Scandinavian simplicity, Los Angeles polish, a touch of rock ’n’ roll, and an understanding of what women want to wear every day.

When we talk, it’s Anine’s first time in Brisbane. She’s returned to Australia after seven years, having last visited Sydney for the opening of her first Australian store. This time, she’s reconnecting with a market that has become one of the brand’s largest. “Australia is our third biggest market. It’s first the US, the UK and then Australia,” she tells me. She’s still trying to work out exactly why Australian women have responded so strongly to the label, although she suspects it has something to do with our approach to getting dressed. “It’s very effortless, easy,” she says. “Australian women are laid-back, but also super elevated.”

That ease translates into the clothes she designs and the way she carries herself. In person, she has a natural way of putting people at ease. As we move beyond fashion, however, I begin to discover a side of her that isn’t immediately apparent through the brand.

Dreaming it into existence

When I ask what people might be surprised to learn about her, Anine doesn’t hesitate. “Maybe they don’t know how sensitive I am. I’m a very sensitive person. Very deep, very spiritual.” Manifestation has been part of her life since she was a little girl. Long before vision boards were a trend on social media, she was writing down her dreams, collecting images, and imagining the future she wanted.

“Everything that has happened in my life I’ve manifested.”

When I ask about her zodiac sign, she tells me she’s a Sagittarius. Astrology, tarot cards, and crystals are also among her interests, and have been for years. She speaks about them with the same enthusiasm she brings to discussing her work. Gratitude is another part of her daily life. Every morning, she writes down 10 things she’s grateful for, a practice she credits with helping her manage the anxiety she’s experienced on and off since childhood. “When I lean into gratitude and connect with myself, I feel so much better.” For Anine, those practices sit alongside an ambition that goes back just as far.

Starting small, dreaming big

Anine was born in a small town outside Copenhagen and grew up in a family of five children, with three brothers and a sister. Her mother was a kindergarten teacher, while her father made homeopathic medicine. She describes their upbringing as simple, without much money or material excess. The children shared a room, attended a Waldorf school, and learned to entertain themselves with what they had. “We didn’t have a lot growing up,” she recalls. “So I think that gave me the creativity and imagination.” It also gave her a desire to experience more of the world. “I knew I wanted to get out in the world and see more than that simple life.”

At 10, her family moved to Sweden. It was a difficult transition, finding herself in a new country, surrounded by unfamiliar people and unable to speak the language. “I think that was actually a big change and trauma in my life,” she tells me. “Moving to a new country, not speaking the language, it’s like the hardest thing I’ve done.” She remembers crying every night for a year, desperate to return to the familiarity of her old life. Looking back, she sees what the experience gave her, too. “It really made me braver, I think. And stronger.”

Although Danish by birth, Anine says she feels more at home in Sweden, where she spent much of her adolescence. When it comes to her personality and work ethic, however, she identifies most strongly with the country she now calls home. “I feel actually the most American,” she says. “Americans dream very big, are very open and very ambitious. And I’m very ambitious.” At just 12 or 13, she opened a savings account and began taking whatever jobs she could find, from cleaning to waiting tables. “I wanted to one day buy my own apartment,” she recalls. Her parents worked hard to provide for their family, although material success wasn’t something they placed much importance on. Anine had other plans.

“I always had that hustler mentality.”

That determination took her beyond Sweden at 14, when she travelled to Milan to pursue modelling. It was the beginning of a career that would take her around the world, exposing her to the fashion industry long before she imagined launching a label of her own. Even now, she finds the Scandinavian approach to balancing work and life quite different from her own. She laughs about friends in Sweden who can’t understand why she doesn’t take six weeks of annual leave or switch off her computer at five in the afternoon. She understands the appeal, but admits it doesn’t come naturally to her. “Because I love what I do,” she says.

Finding her voice

Music was another interest of Anine’s growing up. From an early age, she studied instruments including the violin, flute, and guitar, and sang in a choir. She later performed with the band Kill Your Darlings before putting music aside as her fashion business took off. After years away, she returned to recording. In 2025, she collaborated with Swedish singer and songwriter Lisa Ekdahl on Golden, followed by their EP of five tracks, Let Love Be the Cure, released in 2026.

“When I’m not the founder, I’m not the mother, then I’m a singer and songwriter,” she tells me. “I feel really much like myself when I write music and sing.” What she enjoys most is the freedom that comes with it. “I love it because it comes with no pressure.”

From wardrobe to business

Her love of vintage clothing was developing alongside those early pursuits. Worn denim, leather jackets, simple T-shirts, and oversized tailoring were already staples in her wardrobe. She knew what she liked and wasn’t interested in following trends. Other women were beginning to take notice. Long before Instagram became a career, Anine was sharing her personal style online. She launched Anine’s World in 2004, a blog documenting her outfits, vintage finds, and everyday life. Over the years that followed, she developed an independent following of women drawn to the way she dressed. The blog would eventually inspire her fashion label, while Instagram gave her another way to speak directly to her audience.

“When I started Instagram, no brands really understood the power of Instagram,” she explains. “So I think we got a little bit of a head start.” Anine recognised early on that social media offered a direct relationship with the women following her. She could share what she was wearing, see which pieces resonated, and understand what her audience wanted. By the time she was ready to launch a label, she already had a community interested in the clothes she wanted to create.

Alongside her then husband, Nico, she launched ANINE BING from a garage in Los Angeles in 2012, with a straightforward proposition: create the clothes she wanted to wear but couldn’t always find. Motherhood was already an important part of her life. Anine had always wanted children and hoped to become a mother relatively young. She welcomed her daughter, Bianca, at 28. When the label launched, Bianca was just one year old, and Anine was pregnant with her son, Benji. Her children have been part of the journey from the beginning. While the business was finding its feet, she was raising a young family, navigating motherhood alongside the uncertainty of starting something new.

“I owe everything to social media. That’s how I built my entire brand.”

Today, ANINE BING has more than 30 boutiques worldwide and offices spanning Los Angeles, Paris, New York, and Shanghai. In Australia, the label has boutiques in Sydney’s Paddington and Melbourne’s Toorak and CBD. In Brisbane, the collections are also available at James Street retailers Calexico and The New Trend. Her clothes have found their way into the wardrobes of Meghan Markle, Taylor Swift, and Selena Gomez. Kate Moss has also played a significant role in the brand’s story. A longtime muse for Anine, the British supermodel appeared on her moodboards from the beginning, eventually fronting the label’s 10th anniversary campaign.

Simply Anine

When your name is also your brand, the personal and professional inevitably become intertwined. Anine’s wardrobe inspired the collections, her image helped establish the business, and much of her personal life has unfolded alongside its growth. When I ask whether she’s ever found it difficult to separate herself from the business, she recalls attending an intensive personal development programme through the Hoffman Institute a few years ago. For a week, she was encouraged to put her professional identity aside and focus on herself, without the expectations that usually came with her name.

“I just remember it was so nice just being Anine and not Anine Bing,” she tells me. “Sometimes I felt too much pressure being Anine Bing.” The experience was part of a longer process of understanding herself. Since then, her relationship with her public identity has changed. “Now I feel like I don’t mind. Like, I can be myself fully, even as Anine Bing.” There’s also a lighter side to having a brand that carries your name. Anine recalls spotting someone wearing ANINE BING while walking through Paris, completely unaware of who she was. “I love when people don’t necessarily know who I am,” she says.

Returning to Anine’s World

Away from work, Anine is renovating a home of her own in the hills of Los Angeles. Following her divorce, she’s financially independent and settling into a new chapter with her two children, Bianca and Benji. It’s a long way from the girl who started saving for her own apartment at 12. She has also returned to the blog that helped launch her career. Earlier this month, she relaunched Anine’s World on Substack, more than 20 years after its original debut. This time, she plans to write about style, beauty, travel, manifestation, motherhood, dating, and her creative pursuits, giving readers a more personal look at what interests her today.

“I feel like people are craving more,” she tells me, speaking about the growing interest in personal writing and conversations that go beyond the usual social media updates. She describes the publication as “all of me”, a simple way of explaining why she wanted to return to writing in the first place. The original Anine’s World followed a young woman sharing her wardrobe, travels, and everyday life. Now, with a global fashion business, two children, and a great deal more life experience, she has new subjects she wants to explore.

More than clothing

As the business has grown, so has Anine’s understanding of what it means to lead. She tells me that around 90 per cent of the people working within the company are women, something she takes great pride in. The business has also undergone changes in leadership, with a female CEO appointed and Nicolai stepping away from much of its daily operation.

“I think so much more than just clothing,” Anine says when we discuss what she wants the brand to represent. “I wanna inspire and empower women to dress their best, feel their best.” She’s equally interested in the choices women make outside their wardrobes, and the confidence that comes with them. “That can come from dressing. It can come from choices you make in your life.”

After spending time with Anine, I keep coming back to the girl who opened a savings account at 12. The ambition was there long before the boutiques, the campaigns, or the women wearing her clothes. Today, she has a home to renovate, music to write, a publication to return to, and a business that continues to grow. She’s built much of the life she imagined, and she still has plenty she wants to do.

ON SET

We stepped inside SK Steak & Oyster at The Calile Hotel in Brisbane to photograph our Issue 05 cover muse, Anine Bing. On the cover, Anine wears ANINE BING. Order your copy of Issue 05 via the style shop.

TALENT Anine Bing DIRECTION + WORDS Kiri Johnston PHOTOGRAPHY Jessie Prince WARDROBE Victoria Lewis HAIR Ben Wright MAKEUP Gemma Elaine SHOOT ASSIST Lisa Weizenmuller LOCATION SK Steak & Oyster

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Imagery: Photography by Jessie Prince.