Hunza G Brand Guidelines: The 1984 London Crinkle Label Revived in 2015

A London label named after a valley.

Hunza G began as Hunza, a London label founded in 1984 by Peter Meadows. The company gives that year on its website, and Refinery29 gave the same date and founder in May 2017. The name comes from the Hunza Valley, the mountainous region of Pakistan, Wallpaper* reported in May 2026. Georgiana Huddart, who later relaunched the label, told the magazine she thinks it “such a good name,” calling it “ambiguous, unusual” and “nice to say.”

The label started with a cloth, and accounts of its origin differ. Wallpaper* says Meadows came across a polyamide-elastane blend at a trade show in the 1980s; Huddart told the magazine he was “a garment guy” looking for dress fabrics who “found the crinkle and thought it would be amazing for swimwear.” Liberty, in a feature on the brand’s pop-up in the store, says Meadows created the crinkle-stretch fabric, and Flannels wrote in October 2026 that he engineered it.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, the company says, Hunza became known for bold colours, cut-out silhouettes and a sense of fun. Wallpaper* says its stretch dresses reached Hollywood: Whitney Houston wore one in the video for “I Wanna Dance (With Somebody),” and Julia Roberts wore another in Pretty Woman, the 1990 film. Marie Claire UK describes that dress as a white top and blue skirt joined at the waist by a metal hoop. The company calls it the label’s “most iconic cultural moment,” and Refinery29 said in 2017 that the film was what took the label to prominence.

Then the label went quiet. The Lingerie Museum’s online history says Hunza had faded from view by the mid-1990s, as swimwear tastes moved on. Huddart told ELLE in December 2025 that the brand “had been dormant for over 20 years” when it returned.

A letter added, a fabric rebuilt.

The revival came from a customer. Huddart grew up in London and, the company says, saw her mother wear the pink crinkle; in her twenties she bought vintage Hunza pieces on eBay and found that people commented on them, Wallpaper* reported. Liberty says she made samples in the fabric while studying art history at university. She told Liberty the idea came when she was about 22 and took until she was 27 to happen, and that when she pitched it to Meadows, “the original owner of Hunza,” they relaunched about a week later.

The new label arrived in 2015, with a G added to mark an era under Huddart’s creative direction, Wallpaper* says. Retail Focus and Latham & Watkins both describe her as co-founder. Refinery29 said she worked with Meadows and moved the label towards swimwear. Huddart told Wallpaper* the aim was something “more democratic,” with a broad range of colours and shapes for most customers. In her telling to ELLE, swimwear in 2015 had luxury labels and high-street chains, and “a massive gap” between them.

Everything still rests on the fabric, which the company now calls the Original Crinkle. It says the cloth is knitted as a seamless tube on circular looms holding thousands of needles, each set and replaced by hand; that the machines produce 6.6 billion stitches a day; and that one swimsuit takes nine million stitches. The company says it pioneered the one-size-fit approach to swimwear through this knit. Huddart told Wallpaper*, “We have improved it dramatically since the 80s.”

Accounts of where it is made vary in detail. Wallpaper* says the fabric is produced at a family-run factory in Europe, exclusively for the brand. The Lingerie Museum’s history says production remains in the UK.

One fabric and one size also shape how the label is run. Huddart told ELLE that stock is not seasonal, since a colour might be updated or hardware tweaked, and that this leaves no unsold sizes. She said that was why the label was considered an early sustainable swimwear brand. Newer fabrics extend the range: the company lists a UPF 50+ collection and a quick-dry seersucker, and Wallpaper* mentions gingham pieces released in 2025.

Design and documentation.

Swimwear and resort labels sell a place as much as a garment, so their visual identity tends to start with the setting. Seafolly’s website speaks of Bondi Beach and the Australian beach lifestyle; Vilebrequin’s speaks of Saint-Tropez in 1971. For a designer, the useful question is how that place is carried through photographs, shop interiors and the small printed items around a sale.

The printed fabric is the first thing to study. In this category a swatch can work like a logo: Vilebrequin’s chief executive told The Week in 2017 that it made a sea-turtle print every year in a different colour, and its website describes lining up a back pocket by hand so the pattern runs across it. A print archive, where a label keeps one, gives it a repeatable source of colour and motif from year to year.

Lookbooks then supply the setting. Beach huts, pool edges, towels and harbour walls appear often in this kind of photography, and they do the job a product shot cannot, by showing the clothes in the place they are meant for. Collection names often work the same way: Ragtrader’s report on Seafolly’s summer 2020 range lists names such as Summer Memoirs and Check In, each tied to a print.

Boutique displays and packaging finish the picture. A stack of folded prints reads as a colour field; a swing tag, box or pouch carries the mark away from the shop. Each brand in this guide sets out who founded it, who owns it now and what it says about where its goods are made, and marks what rests on the company’s own word. The palettes here are our own interpretations, not official colours.

One fabric, one dress, one shade of pink.

The Roberts dress has become a recurring product. In May 2017 Refinery29 reported a Hunza G collection for ASOS that included a version of it. The dress returned in the label’s new ready-to-wear collection for spring/summer 2021, Marie Claire UK reported, and RUSSH said that May it came in three colourways, alongside a one-piece swimsuit in the same design.

The brand’s physical presence came late. Until 2023 its collections were stocked only in multi-brand stores including Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nichols, Retail Focus reported in May of that year. Its first store opened on 29 April 2023 in Seven Dials, Covent Garden, for the summer, within walking distance of its Soho headquarters at the time. The fit-out used what Retail Focus called “trademark Hunza G pink,” with artwork by the London artist Alba Hodsoll and curved rails. The same report used the phrase “modern nostalgia” for the brand’s styles, and Liberty calls it a theme at the heart of the label; Huddart told Liberty she loves archive imagery and that a design has to make sense as both “heritage Hunza and modern Hunza.”

Ownership changed in 2024. Latham & Watkins said in a notice dated 2 January 2025 that it had advised Hunza G and Huddart on a management buy-out. Companies House records show that since 25 October 2024 Hunza G Limited, incorporated in 2018, has been controlled by Hunza G Bidco Limited, which is itself controlled by Hunza G Holdings Limited, and they list Huddart as the active person with significant control of Holdings. Meadows and Huddart were both listed as persons with significant control of Hunza G Limited until that date.

In May 2026 Wallpaper* reported a capsule collection with Burberry, setting Hunza G’s signature shapes in Original Crinkle with Burberry check trim, and put the company’s team at over 40 people. Huddart told the magazine that the two brands share an “obsession with fabric innovation.”

For a design guide, Hunza G shows how a brand can be rebuilt from one remembered material. Compare Orlebar Brown, another London swimwear label, and Melissa Odabash, a swimwear label based in the same city. For this guide we use a deep raspberry, a pink and a blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Hunza G’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.