Where does your interest in clothes come from?

I remember being a young girl interested in clothes. I’m not sure where the interest came from but I had two older sisters and I used to love watching them dress up to go out. Our mother would tell us to “dress yourselves up now ladies!”

Was designing clothes always part of that interest?

I was always interested. Growing up in the country in the 1950s was very different to how it is today, we didn’t have a television and there weren’t any magazines. Paper was also very scarce. We had a few books in the house and I would take them and hide and I would draw pictures of dresses on the back pages and put them back on the bookshelf.

Where did you get this dress?

This is the oldest dress I own. I bought this when I was at university In the 1940s and there’s a lot of lovely detail on it. I used to wear it on Christmas day. After church I would change into this dress and wear it all day long. It was nice.

Do you like to go shopping?

I believe that if you go out shopping for one particular item of clothing, even now, I’ll come back from a day’s shopping with nothing because I can’t find exactly what I want. As I get older I tend to put different colours together because I can’t find anything new I like.

What kind of colours would you put together?

I think the easiest thing to say is that I’m not afraid of colour. I’ll wear bright colours together, red and purple or pink and red. I don’t care. It also depends on my mood in the morning. Sometimes I’ll wear blue or if I want a soothing colour – it depends on how much energy I have that day.

Is there any colour that you won’t wear?

I never wear beige. I’m not a beige person!

Where did this come from?

This is very different, a caftan from the 1970s. I chose this top because of the colours. I think that this is the only thing that I have ever bought at Harrods! I can remember when I bought it, we went for tea at the nice restaurant in Harrods first, afternoon tea, and then I was in the mood for some serious shopping!

What do you think of high street shopping?

Shopping on the high street bothers me a little. There are some shops I like and then there are others which I can’t even go into. There’s a large store in Cardiff that I can’t even think about entering sometimes. I’ll walk through the door and think – no, there is no way I can go in here today, and I have to leave because there’s just too much of the same thing. But there are other places that are very good, that you can buy high quality clothes.

Where did you buy this shirt?

I think that my favourite designer of all time was Ossie Clark when he worked in the 1960s in London. He was married to Celia Britwell and she made the prints. She’s recently done a collection for Topshop. I bought this shirt before Christmas, and it looks like two separate pieces but it’s just the one shirt. It has short sleeves and then longer ones underneath. It’s also a mixture of two different prints that she’s used before, but she’s reused it for Topshop and It’s become very popular now.

Where did you get this bag?

This is one of my favourite things that I own but it’s an old bag. The thing I like the most about it is the noise it makes when I close it. It’s very nice inside as well and has a Bond Street label in it. I love it, it reminds me of something from an old film.

What kind of relationship do you have with your clothes?

I look after my clothes and get a little precious about them. If I’ve had something for years I feel like I’ve nurtured them and can’t seem to throw them away. But I think that I need a clearout, and pretty soon at that!