For one of social media’s earliest adopters, designer Anine Bing has a new, very analog obsession: the 43-year-old recently switched back to a paper diary after years of juggling online calendars. “My mind is sometimes a little bit everywhere, and this really helps me,” she says, flashing a warm smile.
As we chat over Zoom about grounding objects and rituals, Bing, who’s wearing a camel cashmere knit – her own design – and chunky gold jewellery, tells me about a feature of her workspace that reveals even more about the woman behind the Anine Bing brand.
On her desk in Los Angeles are strips of white paper with motivational sayings in thick, black letters: “You are closer than you think”, “What if it all works out?” and “Trust your intuition”.
Indeed, following her gut has been a proven strategy throughout Bing’s life, from her childhood in Denmark and Sweden, to pursuing a teenage modelling career and launching a lifestyle blog in the early days of social media.
In essence, Bing was one of the original influencers. Even if her name isn’t immediately familiar, you’ve likely seen the signature logo tees and sweatshirts that launched her brand from a rented LA garage in 2012 – an empire that now boasts 1.2 million Instagram followers and more than 30 stores worldwide, including two in Australia.
Since then, the range has expanded to denim, blazers and accessories, but Bing’s style philosophy – and that of the brand – has remained consistent: timeless, elevated pieces that make women feel confident.
“I don’t follow trends personally, but my design team, of course, have to keep up with what’s going on,” she says. “I really want to design products that a woman can grab year after year. But of course, as a brand, you still have to sprinkle in a little excitement.”
As of last month, that sprinkle has a new address, after Bing opened a new Paris office to house her design team, which has been based in the City of Light since 2025. Located in the 8th arrondissement, the airy space has views across the Seine to the Eiffel Tower and is an easy walk – even in heels – to the Champs-Élysées.
“I feel so proud being in Paris and having a team of almost 100 people [there],” she says. “This is really such a big moment for me.”
The first range designed by the Paris team has just hit stores, and Australian customers got a first glimpse during Bing’s recent 10-day visit to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, which included a dawn Sunday Life cover shoot. As her fourth-largest market, Australian women, Bing says, really get her brand. “They are very welcoming; they are kind,” she says. “Like, even though they’re cool girls, they are nice girls.”
Anine (pronounced “Ah-Nee-Nah”) Bing was born in the town of Lyngby, near Copenhagen, the second-youngest of five children in a “very creative home” where they all sang and played instruments (Bing was in a choir and played violin, flute and guitar).
When she was 11, her father’s work took the family to Sweden, a move Bing describes as “traumatising as a kid to go through. But I think it really built a resilience in me … I was kind of left alone to do my own thing,” she says. “Being a middle child gave me the tools to just figure things out on my own.”
That entrepreneurial spirit led to a 12-year-old Bing staging clothes swaps and sales for her friends. Then, at 14, she convinced her parents to let her travel to Milan to try her hand at modelling. “Looking back, I would never send my daughter Bianca – she’s 15 now – alone to Milan,” she says. “But maybe it was a different time.”
At age 22, Bing’s modelling took her to New York then LA, a city she immediately loved for “its creativity, the diversity of people, the energy of ‘anything is possible’”. Around the same time, she started a blog, Anine’s World, to keep family and friends updated on her adventures – and outfits. Pretty soon, the blog and her Instagram account grew an independent following; those fans would eventually become the early customers of Bing’s brand.
In 2009, while visiting Istanbul, Bing met her future husband and business partner, Nicolai Nielsen. Three years later, following a brief stint in Copenhagen and with Bianca still a baby (they also share a 13-year-old son, Benjamin), they resettled in LA and started Anine Bing with just 10 styles. In their first month trading online, they sold more than $US50,000 worth of goods, mainly jeans and T-shirts.
The business grew exponentially, including a period of rapid expansion between 2017 and 2023 following outside investment. The number of stores multiplied (Sydney opened in 2019; Melbourne in 2023) and Anine Bing became a favourite brand of celebrities including Kendall Jenner and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
Four years ago, Bing, then 39, appeared to have it all. But there was a restlessness inside her that nothing could quieten. Not the family’s house in Montecito, the exclusive community that until recently was home to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Nor the brand’s 10th anniversary collaboration with Bing’s long-time muse Kate Moss, or signing model Irina Shayk as the brand’s global ambassador.
“I just hit a point where I didn’t enjoy work any more; I was not happy, and I got quite depressed and burned out from everything,” she says. “I really just needed this time to look inward; I was [approaching] 40 and asking, ‘What do I want for this next chapter of my life?’”
Her marriage to Nielsen was also, to borrow a fashion metaphor, falling apart at the seams. “I’m so proud of everything we built; we have the two most amazing kids,” she says. “But it’s hard to build a business and be parents and be lovers. And I think that we prioritised the business and the kids – and then we grew apart.”
Bing says the marriage breakdown didn’t happen overnight (she went public with their split in September 2025 via a social media post). She describes feeling a creeping sensation that she had outgrown her own life. “It’s not like you wake up one morning and you want a divorce,” she says.
To help deal with the pressure of the past few years, Bing started seeing a therapist, and attended the Hoffman Process, an intensive personal-growth retreat. It was also around this time she resumed writing music, something she hadn’t done since having kids (she was in a band, Kill Your Darlings, during her early years in LA). In 2024, she released an album, aptly titled Therapy, and is currently recording another, called Chapter Two.
Music, she says, has always been her refuge, “a space where I don’t have to think about numbers or business. It’s a safe place for me to create.” Aside from her own music, she enjoys listening to the Cranberries. The opening verse of her favourite track, Dreams – “Oh my life, is changing every day/ In every possible way” – describes Bing’s own metamorphosis perfectly.
As well as the Paris office, she’s renovating a new home in LA, and has dipped her toe back in the dating pool for the first time in more than 15 years. And, despite the pressure retail is under globally, business is booming (the company’s revenue surpassed $US150 million this year, according to a spokesman).
Despite her fast-paced life, which includes trips to Paris every six weeks, Bing is learning to live with more balance. To her, that means eating a proper lunch where previously she would have “a bag of candy because I was so stressed”, doing Pilates and weights a couple of times a week, catching up with friends, or just being home with her children. “I think balance is having all the things that make me happy,” she says.
Recently, she also re-read A Radical Awakening by Dr Shefali Tsabary, a book that encourages women to free themselves from society’s expectations, and says she relates to Tsabary’s notion of the “awakened woman”. “I feel grounded; I feel clear in my head; I feel excited,” she says. “Of course there are ups and downs, but my general feeling is really good.”
Looking back on the past few years, Bing wishes she had trusted her inner voice more, and used it. Still, she wouldn’t change a thing. “Fifteen years into the business, I’m actually feeling more excited than ever. I feel really lucky that I still love what I do, and that I came back to that love again after being burned out,” she says.
“For the first time, maybe ever in my life, I really trust myself fully and know I’m worthy. I am capable. I really believe in myself in a new way. It’s just a different kind of confidence now [than when I was young]. It’s more grounded, somehow deeper.”
Fashion editor Penny McCarthy. Hair Brad Mullins using O&M. Make-up Cat Smith using Victoria Beckham Beauty. Fashion assistant Liz Hoffmann
Stockists Alinka; Anine Bing; Levante; Sportmax.
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