The consumption of animals - whether you're wearing them or eating them - is extraordinarily damaging to the planet. There are over a billion animals killed a year for food, half of which don't even get eaten. And there's over 50 million animals killed just for fashion.

Strength on its own in a woman is quite abrasive and not terribly attractive all the time.

The really great thing about my shop is that there's not one dead animal in it. ... Manolo's got a load of fabric shoes as well! We use plastic, fabric, rubber- anything but leather. I almost feel like I've been put here to show everyone that it's unnecessary.

I wanted to feel good about the way I looked. I didn't understand why style had to be sacrificed for sports technology. I found when going to the gym women were wearing their own tees, without the technology. I started to think, does it make you run faster if you wear that terrible color or sweat less if you wear that horrible fabric? And I challenged it, and the answers were not there to why we were being given poor design work. It was something I wanted to bring to women's wardrobes.

I am a fashion designer. I'm not an environmentalist. When I get up in the morning, number one I'm a mother and a wife, and number two I design clothes. So the main thing I need to do is create, hopefully, exquisitely beautiful, desirable objects for my customer.

I think my mum was really very ahead of her time. She wore very little makeup. She really explored the way that she wore clothes in a very honest way. She wore a lot of vintage stuff and mixed it with bespoke men's tailoring and things like that. That was a huge influence on me, seeing a woman in the spotlight carry herself in that kind of way. But mostly, for me, it was just that she was an incredibly honest and sort of natural person.

I don't use specific brands really. It's just that for my skin, I need as high an SPF factor as I can get my hands on. That's the only rule.