By Bryony Jewell

Copyright evoke

Everyone needs a toilet friend, just ask Joanne McNally, who has ended up running a successful business with the pal she met at a house party.

Although best known for her comedy (if you’ve not shared one of her Instagram skits in the girls’ group chat, you’re lying) and podcast with pal Vogue Williams, Joanne is also busy designing handbags.

Joanne and Nikki Lannen launched Anxious Preoccupied in 2023, and now, just a mere two years later, their brand is stocked in Brown Thomas Dundrum and Arnotts.

Chatting as she celebrated the launch in the retail store, Joanne explained how she and Nikki met at a party and never looked back.

‘Nikki’s a toilet friend, one of those girls who you meet and swap lipsticks with and decide you’re one of me, that’s how we met [at a house party],’ Joanne said.

At the start of their friendship and business partnership, Joanne was a little on the fence about flogging bags to her fans but has now embraced her double persona as comedian-turned-designer.

She recalled: ‘When we started, it was great craic, and then it got a little bit stressful because in my mind I was like “this is meant to be a bit of merch” but now it’s a bag business.

‘I was being a bit precious about my comedy and was like “Bill Burr doesn’t sell handbags, Amy Schumer doesn’t sell handbags”, I was like, can I do both things? Is it going to cheapen my standup?’

‘Now I’m over that and I get such a kick out of it… I’ve gotten over myself, and being a comedian selling things, I love it now. Now I’ll do anything,’ she says, before adding a quick ‘within reason.’

It hasn’t all been plain sailing for the duo, and they have had launches that didn’t go well. Recalling their attempt at tracksuits, Joanne admits the trousers were too short (a problem tall girls know all too well).

‘If it’s not working, it’s not working. We’re deluded but we’re honest,’ Joanne said, taking it all as a learning lesson.

Anxious Preoccupied’s most recognisable style is undoubtedly one of the oversized holdall (€149) that comes in a range of metallics.

‘We wanted a Mary Poppins-style bag you could pull over Ryanair’s eyes,’ Joanne says with a laugh when asked about the inspiration behind the bag.

As for the story behind the brand’s name, it’s a Joanne McNally classic that proves everything really can be for the plot, and yes, as with many funny stories’ origins, the name is inspired by an ex-boyfriend.

Joanne recalled with a laugh: ‘I was seeing a guy at the time, and we weren’t getting on, classic, so I sent him to a therapist… he came back and it was all about attachment styles and this is crazy, his was anxious preoccupied and mine was secure… which meant I was driving him insane and I thought [anxious preoccupied] was a fun name.

‘It [the business] started out as a bit of fun for me and Nikki to do together, she likes building businesses, I missed the marketing side and the PR and branding, the thing I was trained to do… and that’s how the business grew!’

So then, with Anxious Preoccupied now stocked in Brown Thomas Dundrum and Arnotts, what’s next for the brand? Joanne hopes it’ll be a move into homeware and has her eye on bedding and wallpaper.

Metallic wallpapers and oversized prints for statement walls that cool girls everywhere will be jealous of? Consider us intrigued.

See more photos from the launch at BT below