Emma Cheevers

“I’d done fashion journalism at St Martin’s and was working hard for very little money. I decided to go back to Vancouver and open up a lingerie shop there. I was talking to another Canadian friend who has a design background and she said, “Why go back? Why don’t we make our own here?”

“That’s how it happened – chatting over a meal. In three weeks we had the samples, factory and company. I have a collection of antique lingerie and loads of books and my partner, Alexandra Suhner, is an amazing technical-drawer and designer. We took things we liked and played with them. She did the samples and I set up a company online.

“It was really an accidental company: there was absolutely no business plan! We sent images of our collection to 20 shops and Fenwick took us up. I think the fact we’d been at St Martin’s helped.

“That was about five years ago. We got in at the right time and we do high-end lingerie. Now we’re talking to a large department store about doing a diffusion range for them.”