You\'re Creative Director of Liberty of London. Tell us a bit about your job.
I come up with a concept for the season, and then brief it out to the team, and then pretty much work with them daily on absolutely everything. We always start with the colours, sorting out the palette for the next season, then it\'s all the prints and embroideries, because obviously it\'s very print and decoration based. Then once we\'ve sorted all that out, we start developing shapes of the handbags, prints on bikinis and so on. We\'ve also done a jewellery collection, which is another thing we\'re launching next season. It\'s quite amazing. What I love about it [the job] is it\'s not about sitting in an ivory tower and designing, it\'s very, very hands-on and it\'s very much about going to little factories in Florence and working with handbags, and the people who make them.

Picture:  silk twill Chelsea Flower Show scarf, £150 at Liberty of London

Where do you turn to for inspiration initially? You mentioned you travel a lot, how do you bring it all together?

It\'s quite hard because if you\'re lower, middle-market then you just follow trends, but because we\'re fashion leaders we\'ve got to come up with something from scratch. What pulls me back each time is thinking about Arthur Liberty [who founded Liberty in 1875], and the heritage, and thinking, "OK, what does Liberty stand for? Does it make sense within the whole heritage and the whole history"?

Was there a specific print you took from the archive for this season?

I always use the famous Ianthe print, which we use in every possible connotation we possibly can because that gives us a really strong identity. It\'s like the lynchpin that everything revolves around. With the swimwear collection I found some prints in the archive that were very Art Nouveau because I felt like it was right for that moment.

Picture:  Ianthe bikini, £85 at Liberty of London

How does your personal style fit with Liberty? Is there a relationship or are they quite separate?
I suppose the reason I was taken on for the job in the first place is that there was some kind of link between the way I think and the way I design and the way I look.

What things in particular?
I suppose colour - even though I\'m wearing black today! Colour is one of the most important things to me. I love turquoises and purples and rich golds - really rich, sort of Persian, Arabic kind of colours which links back to the whole ethos of Arthur Liberty - he was the first person to bring Persian rugs over. I suppose I\'m quite eclectic, there\'s a mixture of things I like to wear, it\'s not ever from one person. I don\'t go in and buy a whole outfit from one designer, it\'s something that I\'ve found somewhere from travelling and I\'ve put it together with a designer piece. I wouldn\'t be able to say I have a particular look that you could identify from a designer, though.

Picture: embossed leather purse, £225 at Liberty of London

Who are your favorite designers?
Azzedine Alaïa and Lanvin are my favorites, and bits and pieces from Prada.

Where do you shop, apart from Liberty?
Dover Street Market.

What about when you\'re travelling?

Markets, but there\'s less and less travelling now, I\'m so tied to work here. At Christmas time we went to Shanghai which was interesting. I picked up a traditional antique Chinese skirt which is lovely, and I\'ve been wearing that with a black shirt.

Picture:  embossed Ianthe passport holder, £95 at Liberty of London

What about jewellery? Have you always been into it?
I\'ve normally got loads of jewellery on. I went through a stage where I didn\'t wear any at all, except earrings. I suppose I\'ve never quite liked that hobo look. I was never into that ‘pile it on, loads of prints, loads of jewellery\', I really moved away from that. I was much more interested in the minimalist designers and I suppose because of my years working at Prada and Romeo Gigli it was much more about the clothing rather than the jewellery and the accessories, funnily enough, even though I\'m so involved in designing accessories now.

Is the jewellery you\'ve designed for Liberty of London similar to something you yourself would wear?
I personally wouldn\'t wear so much, because my clothing tends to be quite complicated. But if you\'re wearing very simple clothes and you haven\'t got much time, then jewellery\'s brilliant because you just put it on and that\'s it - you\'re ready to roll.

Picture:  bone embossed handbag, £695 at Liberty of London

Is your team based here?
Yes. It\'s very unusual to try to produce anything in this country because everything is manufactured abroad.  We did a swimwear collection because that was the first way I tried to get rid of the whole concept of Liberty being an old ladies\' provincial shop. I thought, "Right, I\'m going to do bikinis, really tiny bikinis, with enormous prints on," and they were a real hit. So I suppose the brand\'s being going... not even two and a half years, really. We just finished our second season wholesaling and we\'re happy to say we\'re in all the key directional stores pretty much across the world, like Dover Street Market, and 10 Corso Como in Milan. It\'s been really exciting to get it to that stage.
So it\'s all happening fast in terms of the lines, and the upcoming shop on London\'s Sloane Street?
I\'m so excited. I wanted to work with these two people that did Lanvin [architects Jean-Christophe Poggioll and Pierre Beucler] - because I\'m in love with Lanvin and everything they do - and they agreed to do it which was just so fantastic. They did the Comme des Garçon store and they did all of Dior Homme with Hedi Slimane, so for me it was an honour of being on the level of working with Hedi and Rei Kawakubo.

 Picture:  \'Gesso New Yorker\' handbag, £725 at Liberty of London

Are the architects designing the exterior as well?
Just the interior, because of planning permission. We\'re on the ground floor and a bit of the first floor, for menswear. It\'s looking to the future, it\'s about what Liberty represents in the future. Really modern. And it\'s going to be a carbon print, the model we roll out, in terms of new stores in the future, for a boutique in New York, say, or in-store boutiques. Everyone\'s had a bit of a bash at trying to replicate Liberty. Years ago when I was a child there were all these little wooden stores around the provinces that were really awful, cheesy things. Wooden, fake things. What I was trying to come up with was something that was completely not that, something that was absolutely not the old perception of Liberty. Something completely modern. We\'ve got to compete with Lanvin, Chloe, Dior, all of those companies that are huge. We\'re just a tiny little ant in comparison, aren\'t we?

Picture:  silk twill scarf,  £95 at Liberty of London

Speaking of the future, as well as the new shop opening, you\'ve just launched the online boutique, libertyoflondon.co.uk. Tell us about that.
It\'s very small - we wanted to keep it simple. You can go mad online and do endless amounts of products, so I just wanted to keep it very tight and focused.
What\'s the difference between the stuff in the shop and what\'s available to buy online?
I\'d like to say I\'ve personally edited it, I\'ve chosen the best bits. The strongest pieces, I suppose, the pieces that really shout the brand. There is more in-store, but it\'s a very clear, focused collection, even though as yet it\'s only accessories.
This is all happening quite fast! How do you see the brand evolving over the next few years?
Oh good, I\'m glad you think this is happening fast, the board think I\'m dragging my feet! Quite funny. I think it\'s fast, especially at this level of quality. I\'d love to have another store in New York, and one in Russia. And to have little corners [concessions] opening up in stores. So that\'s the next thing, to start having a bigger presence around the world.

Picture:  Ianthe embossed leather bag, from £395 at Liberty of London

You\'ve made Liberty of London cool, after it being so twee for such a long time, without losing sight of its heritage. How have you done that?
I\'m really glad you\'ve said that! I don\'t know... it\'s been quite a struggle to explain what I\'ve been trying to do - for people to get it, but now I\'m really pleased. Internally, within my team there\'s been incredible support when other people have said "but I don\'t understand why you\'re not doing a flowery washbag" and it\'s like "no, this is about the future, we can\'t look back". And I think it\'s been hard because when you come back and you have a piece of silver embossed leather with a large Ianthe design and it\'s so far removed from a little floral print washbag... it\'s hard for people to get to grips with it. But I\'ve been convinced. I can so see how this is going to be.

Picture:  green Ianthe print bikini, £85 at Liberty of London

You must be quite good at selling your vision, if you\'ve managed to keep everyone on board. And persistent.
Absolutely. I suppose it\'s because I\'m so clear on what it should be, in my head it couldn\'t be clearer, pretty much from when I started. The background experiences that I\'ve had are almost like... if you stand back and look at Prada or Romeo Gigli, they could be an Italian Liberty, in a sense. There\'s a very similar aesthetic and discipline, and way of working. And my background being mixed cultures and what Liberty\'s history\'s about. It\'s all kind of gelled and makes sense.
 

Picture:  embossed leather holdall, from £395 at Liberty of London

Want more? Read handbag.com\'s interview with Lou Doillon 

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Picture:  ianthe embossed leather \'pumpkin\' bag, £795 at Liberty of London

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