Marle Woman: Annika Hein

Marle Women is created to celebrate our philosophy of designing pieces for women of all ages and stages of their lives. We hope each interview inspires you, the same way in which these women do to us.

Annika Hein is a multi-disciplinary creative and the founder and editor of JANE Magazine, a slow art movement considering and challenging the dialogue around creative intention and consumption.

Helmed by a desire to slow things down, Annika is passionate about creating and producing consciously, believing that we as human beings can no longer afford to make any purchase decisions without thinking about issues of sustainability and waste.

Here, we chat with Annika about her approach to creation, the importance of cultivating a like minded community and what her intentions are at the moment in time.

I am a writer and creative director and also the founder and editor of JANE magazine. Through an exploration of art, fashion, philosophy, and culture my work considers and questions the way we’re creating, interacting, and consuming in an effort to perhaps offer an alternative observation that’s guided toward the preservation of art and artfulness in life.

I’ve been making things in different mediums as a response to my environment since I was about three and the element of recording and keeping a personal archive has always been really important to me; I gain a lot of inspiration from revisiting these memories, understanding and interpreting them as past but vital versions of myself.

My sun is in Pisces and my moon is in Libra—water and air—which is interesting because I do love to practice rituals and exercises that focus a lot around grounding. I am a very emotional, highly sensitive person, and I don’t particularly like to be rushed, so I suppose it’s relevant that much of my writing and creative work explores and advocates for slow process and slow art movements.

I am also a mother to my 16-month-old daughter Vahla Inès.

We created JANE as a response to the media landscape at the time. Our intention was to build a publication and a community that considered and challenged the dialogue around creative intention and consumption.

As we’ve grown and evolved maintaining and protecting our creative integrity and holding true to our vision and voice has remained our priority, which is why I believe we have such a strong and recognisable aesthetic. We’re not trying to be everything for everyone and I think that adds value to the content we produce. It allows our content and creative direction to be inclusive and interesting and diverse yes, but avoids the need to engage in marketing hacks and hype campaigns that are driven by corporate agendas and have little consideration for artistic intention.

Community is really at the heart of everything we create and the intention behind JANE was always to become more than a magazine. Over the past four years we’ve shaped it to be a slow art movement, something that goes beyond the pages and champions an overarching change in artistic and creative consumption and conception. This community is something that we’re very proud of and my hope is that both the publication and the movement can act as a support system that works to unite us through words and art while we explore alternative versions, and speeds, of consumption.

"We created JANE as a response to the media landscape at the time. Our intention was to build a publication and a community that considered and challenged the dialogue around creative intention and consumption"

Each issue is shot entirely on film, were there any defining factors that influenced this choice?

The intention behind JANE was to slow things down. Analogue photography is the embodiment of this intention; it is a physical process that greatly facilitates the connection between self and art. It also allows for a more mindful exploration within the act of creating.

Yes absolutely. Human beings as a collective can no longer afford to make any purchase decisions without thinking about issues of sustainability and waste. Beyond the aesthetics and the content, we have to be accountable for the materials we’re choosing and the logistics involved in running a publication.

In addition to sustainability, from a creative and manpower perspective there is just no need for us to print more than two issues per year. The themes and concepts explored within the issues are done so extensively and in such depth that it takes a few months to consume and then digest them. We want to offer our readers space and time to be inspired, to create, or to simply sit with concepts presented.

From a logistical standpoint as well, we are still a two-person team. Odin and I work on every element of the business, from packing orders to creating briefs and producing content so at this time in addition to creating online content and launching JANE productions we just couldn’t manage more than two issues per year.

Some who come to mind in this moment:

Mary Oliver

All strong women in the arts who have embodied their practice as a way to view and speak about the world.

That the brand is rooted in sustainable and conscious design and production philosophies.

To explore and embody practices that are conducive to a calm and regulated nervous system.

I am very sentimental so I could make a really long list here: ticket stubs from seeing Patti Smith, a gold chain my mother gifted me for my 30th birthday that was her mothers bought for her by my uncle when he was a small child, my dad’s silver harmonica - that is one of my favourite sounds. A photograph of my sister and I in matching sequin hats, the memory box I made during Vahla’s first year.

One that seems relevant at the moment is a silver crescent moon charm that I sometimes wear on a chain around my neck. Odin bought it for me for our first or second anniversary. He used to call me his moon girl and now we have Vahla who we call moonflower and who looks up to say hello to the moon every night.

I’ve also been thinking about sentiment and object and the relationship I have to physical things because some of my most important or treasured things can’t actually be held or seen or saved: the booth where we sat at on that rainy Tuesday and ate pizza in New York because it was too cold outside, the place where Vahla’s placenta is buried, the smell of the lavender bush in the garden of our home in the hills, the seat at the lake that became a marker of the most important time in our lives. And so I guess my most treasured object would really have to be my photographs as they’re perhaps the closest things I have to mark a physical expression of my memories.

Organic cotton and organic hemp.

I use to be quite protective over my mornings, and looking back they were really elaborate in terms of the things I made time for. Since my daughter Vahla was born my relationship to ritual has changed a lot. I’ve learnt to be quite fluid and adaptive constantly folding in or forgetting things as her daily rhythm evolves.

At moment the things I won’t budge on are turning both the Wi-Fi and my phone off before bed and scraping my tongue as soon as I wake up. I also try for some gentle stretches or conscious breathing while I’m nursing Vahla to sleep and a nice hot cup of tea in the morning with Odin while Vahla reads her books.

We’re also right in the middle of production for issue ten so I listen to a lot of Ludovico Einaudi and This Will Destroy You while I’m writing.