Penny Martin: Shelley, can you tell me how you got into the fashion industry.

Shelley Fox: I used to make my own clothes when I was at home. I made them out of curtains. Second-hand shops were much more interesting at the very beginning of the 80s, it was probably 81, 82 when I left school at home in Scunthorpe. At that point, fashion education was not advertised in the way it is now, and it was very different. I didn't even realise that you could do a degree in fashion when I was that young, and it was just something that I was interested in. Then I found out about a foundation course, and I think once I went into that, my whole world opened up to completely different possibilities. I never did art at school, never anything to do with art or design. I did very much social science subjects, which is quite odd: all these other subjects and then completely had nothing to do with them when I left.

Then I went to a foundation course in Grimsby, which is probably just like half and hour up the motorway. There was an amazing tutor called Irene Smith, who opened up this other world. I was there for about two years and then I moved to London, and went to Croydon College. At the time, it was a one-year technical course, which I'm glad I did. It's more like what they called a HNC. They didn't have a degree course at that time. I've just seen the way education changes, it's almost like everybody does a degree in fashion now. At that time, there were quite particular courses, and I did that technical course, pattern cutting and so on. After that, I ended up in Middlesex Poly, this must be about '87. I only went for three months and I hated it, absolutely hated it. I think I hated fashion, I hated everything about what fashion was. I felt very isolated, I couldn't relate to it at the time, but it may have been because of the time, I'm not really sure.

Penny Martin: Judging by consumer magazines of the mid-to-late '80s, British fashion was very focused on Japanese and especially American fashion design.

Shelley Fox: Yeah, looking back now it was a time where everything was becoming more globalised. Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, those big brand designers. Also, it was the time of the start of the super model. It's quite odd but I remember looking at all those magazines at the time and I couldn't connect to them at all.

Penny Martin: So who were the fashion designers that you'd been interested in prior to that period?

Shelley Fox: Prior to that? When I left school in '81, I think I discovered fashion through music primarily, through magazines like The Face, because they were music magazines. It was all through the music. At the time, the people I looked towards were Vivienne Westwood... At the time she wasn't really taken that seriously as a fashion designer. I remember actually being laughed out of an interview for college because I said Vivienne Westwood was my favourite designer. It's really interesting looking back now, I didn't really take it on board at the time, which just shows you. I realise that she wasn't taken seriously even then. It was very much underground, quite cult at the time. Also, I was looking at people like Commes des Garcons, when they launched in 81: the way they started and what they were doing.

I went on this road unintentionally. I thought a degree course would be as energetic and as passionate as my foundation course, only with the equipment and the money, and all of that. It wasn't. It was a very, very different thing. I think it really threw me and I couldn't really deal with it and I left college. I left just after a term and suddenly found myself living in London not being a student any more, not having the support network of a student body. But I actually really enjoyed it, it just thought 'well I'm in London and now I have to find myself a job'. My first job I found was at the National Portrait Gallery. I worked in the bookshop and then I used to do all the archiving of the post cards. I found myself supporting myself being in London, and I found it more interesting than being at college at that time.

I did many jobs that had absolutely nothing to do with fashion. I worked in record shops, I worked in a shop called Rebecca that used to be the female kind of equivalent of Sam Walker, and it used to sell amazing antique period clothing. It was a fantastic shop, and then it was at the time where I met Ross (Tibbles) I decided that I should get back to college.

Penny Martin: What was he doing?

Shelley Fox: Ross was a painter, he had graduated from Kingston University at the time. I went back to college (at Central Saint Martin's College) with this notion in my head that I didn't want anything to do with fashion. I embarked on a textile course instead, and it was really funny. When I got into the textile course I was like 'I don't really want to just do this either, I actually do want to do cutting and designing clothes'. I tried to cross over to fashion, but in the end they said 'no, you're better off staying where you are'. I ended up actually printing and knitting and doing textile design, which I now realise was a really important part of what I do now.

After graduating in 1993, I went to New York to try and get a job in the industry, quite navely. I realize now that I went with a portfolio that was neither fashion, straight fashion for New York, nor textiles, and they're very very commercial there. So I came back, I worked for Joe Casely-Hayford for a season; it didn't really work out. I'd already been offered a place on the MA at Saint Martin's, immediately after I left the BA, but I didn't do that because I couldn't finance it. I thought 'it's impossible, I can't possibly do that'. I think when you leave, you have to deal with just graduating, and doing an MA wasn't something that I'd thought about. When it didn't work out at Joe's I ended up going on to the MA.

We did the show during London Fashion Week. Then what St Martin's do is they have two weeks where they have a presentation, like an exhibition in the college, and they invite all the industry in. At the time Margaret Burke, who is the head of the College, was very good friends with Angela Quentrel at Liberty because she's a big Issey Miyake buyer. She saw the collection and wanted to buy it, but I'd just been offered a job in Italy on my portfolio, they hadn't met me and they said they wanted to offer me a job in Italy.

Penny Martin: Where was that?

Shelley Fox: This was a company called Fuzzi. They're based in Rimini in the middle of nowhere. It felt like I was on a dual carriageway. It was really odd, going in and clocking in and clocking out. It reminded me of my home town; factories, clocking in, clocking out. My mum used to work in a crisp factory when she was supporting herself through her degree. She did a degree later on in life and I know that that's part of how it is, but it didn't sit with me very comfortably. I was also stranded in the middle of Rimini. It's not like being in a city, you're in a small sea town, a coastal town. They make all the knitwear for Gaultier, and Hugo Boss, Hugo and other people now. It could have been interesting but I already knew that Liberty were interested in buying my collection so I went back to London, and then that's when I approached the Crafts Council.

Liberty bought the MA collection and I went to see Jane Athley. I didn't really plan and say 'right, let's set up a business and let's do this and that'. I just ran with it, and, which was probably a bit mad, thinking about it. I approached the Crafts Council about a setting up grant for equipment and rent and I got it. That was really good; my application was one of nine out of a hundred and fifty people that quarter, so I'm lucky I got that.

Penny Martin: What exactly does that grant support?

Shelley Fox: It was the textiles. I knew that if I started talking about fashion they would just not be interested, so I played down the fashion and played up the textiles. It's almost like they have an agenda and I tried to work myself into that. I think that's what I did for a while: finding out where the money was in terms of grants. That's how I sustained myself for a while and then I started teaching, quite soon actually after graduating. I was quite surprised when somebody gave me the chance to teach. After that, I was approached by more people and as I got more press, I started to get even more.

Penny Martin: You're very ordered in the way that you present your ideas.

Shelley Fox: Oh really? Going out to China just recently, we were doing a presentation and the thing I was most nervous about was not presenting to the audience, because I don't know then so I can kind of cut them off, it was presenting in front of people like Alan Yentob, the consultant for Channel Four, and all those digital design companies that you have a lot of respect for! You have to do your bit. I always feel that you're guilty until proven innocent when you're a fashion speaker.

Penny Martin: Tell me how you approach a new collection.

Shelley Fox: I think sometimes I have too many ideas. In the past I haven't focussed in on enough ideas, and by the time we get to an end of a collection there's loads more possibilities for the next collection. In some cases where that has happened, I'll have a feeling about where I want a collection to go. Sometimes it can be completely unexpected, the way that the Bletchley Park collection happened.

Penny Martin: What number was that?

Shelley Fox: That was number ten. Again, it was linked to the Morse Code, so it was something that I'm already interested in. The Bletchley Park visit came out of being stuck in the traffic in Liverpool Street. Robert Elms, the great Robert Elms, was interviewing a gentleman called Leo Marks who wrote this book called 'Between the Silk and Cyanide'. Basically, he was a bit of an upstart and a bit of maverick at Cambridge. His father ran 84 Charing Cross Road. Leo Marks also wrote Peeping Tom, the film in the '60s. He would probably be in his early '80s and he was talking about when he was a code breaker during the Second World War. The headquarters were in the Marks and Spencer's building in Baker Street, because it was the biggest space available in central London.

He used to work with about four hundred women, around the clock in shifts, breaking codes. He talked about how he thought about all the agents that had got 'lost'. They probably broke ninety five percent of the codes, but he always thought about the five percent that they didn't break and what happened to them. The way they were tortured. He was trying to devise ways, when agents were in the field under duress, that they would be able to bring Morse Code back information without it being muddled because they're so stressed. He tried to develop poems through codes, and then they were printed onto silk and lined into the coats. If somebody was captured and they had padded the insides of the coats with silk, they would never feel that there was something there, hiding. What they used to do was take the inside of the lining out and there would be codes already set up for something like this, so they could Morse things back. Then they would set fire to the silk, so they could destroy the evidence. His notion was that if people don't have the information in their head then you can't torture it out of them.

He was just such an amazing bloke. I just remember being in this traffic jam and then went out and bought the book. That led me and Ross to think 'let's go a visit Bletchley Park to see what it's like'. It was before all those films came out. That was so irritating; when you know a huge amount of truth is missing out of them and then it becomes something else. So we went on this visit to Bletchley Park to look at this building in the middle of nowhere, near Milton Keynes, and it was quite amazing.

So what does that have to do with clothes? Sometimes the starting point is a feeling that you can't put your finger on it. How that translates into a collection. We did Morse Code in the number seven and eight collections, and then we looked at Bletchley Park, and before Morse Code we'd looked at Braille... I can almost articulate it now, but it's only because I can look back at it. But when I'm doing it I don't really know why I'm doing it.

The fourth collection was interesting, because that was the start of the most interesting cutting for us. It was the first time we started working with the elastoplast idea, and the medical fabrics. Again, that happened by accident, tripping over and then starting to delve into the archives of Smith and Nephew's medical fabrics. Those collections were incredibly press-worthy, but production-wise it's not good to make clothes from medical fabric, because they can't sustain that kind of wear and tear. The Braille came about through visiting the product shop of the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and all the everyday things that you see. One of my favourite bits was a little box, like a square A4 box with lines, so blind people can write in straight lines when they're writing a letter. You wouldn't dream of thinking about how to develop things for blind people unless, or you don't think to think about it in your own world because you're not blind.

Penny Martin: So how much time do you give over to research?

Shelley Fox: It gets squeezed in to be honest, which I think's a really bad way of working. We don't have production managers, so a lot of the things I'm organising myself. To pull myself out of the studio becomes a big issue. When I do, one of my favourite places is the Imperial War Museum. I discovered the photography and sound archives, and I didn't realise anyone can go.

It's not until I'm in those moments that I think 'this is why I do it, this is why I do the work'. Other times it's 'why am I in this industry, what the hell am I doing?'

Penny Martin: Have you ever considered that research could be the thing itself, for you?

Shelley Fox: In the last year I've started to think in that way a little bit. Today I'm fresh from coming from seeing my brother and talking about the business, and how it can't be sustained in the way it is now. I was saying to him that I don't feel like I've had a day off for seven years.

Penny Martin: When you're a researcher you don't have a day off because you're always thinking about your research.

Shelley Fox: But that's the bit I enjoy. The other bit is actually very dull but has to be done. When people pull out, backers or sponsors, it makes you re-address things. I'm now trying to work with say composers, or D-fuse and SHOWstudio, people that are creative and involved in fashion, but in different ways. I find that much more interesting.

With collection twelve at the Tomato Gallery, just working in that gallery space and just putting the clothes in a different context was really interesting. I think it was the process I enjoyed, but I also from the other side, I realised that you have to show the clothes on a person. Especially my clothes because they don't always have great hanger appeal. They look a bit odd and it's not until you put them on you realise what they are.

I think I'm at a stage now where I need to reap the benefits of all the research that we've done. I remember somebody saying to me 'Shelley, you don't need to design any more collections because you've got about five years worth of ideas that you've not even really developed properly yet'.

Penny Martin: How do you regard the garments you make: what is more important to you, their structure or the look of the fabrics you use?

Shelley Fox: I think, I think it swings from different collections. There'll be some collections where the fabric becomes the most important, like some of the things we did with the burnt sequins in number eight, with all those kinds of frills and felts. Although we've worked with felt a lot, actually the cutting wasn't that interesting in terms of being pushy. It was more about the sequins and the destroying, and the setting fire to them.

Penny Martin: You have quite progressive approaches to pattern cutting that's different to working from the standard block.

Shelley Fox: Yeah, in some collections it will be purely just on the cutting and then the fabrics take a back seat. The fabrics end up being almost like blank canvass.

Penny Martin: So that was in number twelve where you were using the circle instead of a block?

Shelley Fox: Yeah. We started tentatively in the number four collection, went into number five, a lot bigger in number six and seven, then started to calm down a bit. Then we started looking at the sequin collection, which was, funnily enough, our most saleable collection. Now we've started looking at things and are putting really difficult shapes, what are considered difficult shapes into sweatshirts. It becomes non-precious and everyday, and they do really really well. It's because people can get past the fabric because it's just a sweatshirt. Put it in the wash, throw it around your waist; you're not really that careful with a sweatshirt.

Penny Martin: Who is the intended audience is for your clothes?

Shelley Fox: It's an interesting point because it's the first question students ask me when I do a talk: 'who's your audience?' Because of the way the clothes are, and I don't know if I'm being nave in saying this, but I think sometimes the market finds them. When we've done sample sales, we have people walking in off the street, no expectations, who don't know the first thing about me. They pick up one of the most difficult, considered difficult pieces -say a buyer who understands selling of clothes- and they're thrilled. They come out and they go 'wow I never thought it would look like that', and buy it, cash on the table, and they walk out.

I remember a woman who came out for a bagel on a Sunday morning, walked out with two leather pieces, spent 250 cash, went to the bank, got the money, had to have them. If I saw her on the street, I wouldn't think she would wear my clothes. So it's quite surprising. I've dressed people that are size sixteen and they're sixty-five years old, who have great style; really confident women. I think people find their way to them. The exhibitions have been really interesting as well. They bring in a different audience from someone who may go to Browns Focus or may shop at Harvey Nichols. I don't set out with an agenda of who they're intended for.

Penny Martin: Do you think about how your clothes appear to a heterosexual male audience, or is that an issue?

Shelley Fox: It's interesting. I've had lots of feedback, some incredibly negative. I know people have described the clothes as 'ugly as concrete'. I loved that, I thought it was a really great quote by someone at The Evening Standard. It was when I was doing all the grey felt things. You know, a year later it was all being done by Prada and Donna Karan, but there you go. Some male people in the industry think they're not feminine, you know, 'you're like a bag lady'. Then I'll speak to my friend Valerie who has so many of the clothes and she looks incredibly feminine. She says there's something she feels but she can't explain it. Somebody once said to me what they like about the way I cut was that they felt really protected around the waist and not exposed. Comfortable, but still they felt elegant and protected.

Penny Martin: Would you agree that the overarching feeling behind the criticism that you're describing is that sex isn't the core motivation for you collections?

Shelley Fox: Yeah, probably, I think it is. I remember one collection, number ten. Even some of my own friends said 'oh my god that's really sexy for Shelley'. I know exactly what they meant. Even after that collection we thought 'my god, if this doesn't sell nothing will', and it didn't do as well. I don't think that many people are aware of what I have done in the eighteen months since I've shown, and you're judged on one or two pictures in the press. All those terms are so overused that they mean nothing any more: 'avant garde, conceptual'... The bottom line is that our work is based on ideas and not trends. You can use all those words but they mean nothing anymore because they're used in the wrong way. It also it affects sales, because I think when buyers read 'avant garde or conceptual' they read 'unsellable, unwearable'.

Penny Martin: Did September 11 affect your sales?

Shelley Fox: Yeah, Autumn/Winter 2001 was our last show and after that, we knew we never wanted to show in London again. But how do you get to the next stage of showing in Paris? That's what we've been trying to do.

Penny Martin: How does it change the nature of the collection knowing that you're going to show it in a non-runway form?

Shelley Fox: Well, the way the current SHELLEY FOX 14 collection started off was... You see these piles of pillowcases over there? Pillowcases and the napkins? I found them in a shop just sitting there. They reminded me of portraits in a way. There was just something really beautiful about them, but I had no idea how I could get them from that to clothing and still keep that feeling. We wanted to make it look like the initial reference was still very evident in the clothing, that it was a pillowcase but it's turned into something else. We liked the idea of that it was a pillowcase from British Airways or Air France Hotels, that had been slept on, cried on, people had had sex on, you know, it was all those kind of everydaynesses... The way that they just go round in the laundry, via huge laundry contracts. They're all re-pressed and they go back out again. We wanted to take those into the clothes, and also the napkins with the little buttonhole at the top that you attach it to your top button, for dinner in very nice hotels around London.

We actually built the shape of the clothing around the twisting of a napkin, so we would take literally a square of fabric and then start twisting it. However that shape started to go, that's what the dress would be. I never sit down and draw a collection. That's what you're taught to do at college: draw the collection then make it, but it never works like that. You have to start fiddling around. It would be pointless to design a whole collection and then get to number one and start making it and it doesn't work. So that's how we kind of work really: with the fabrics and then manipulating the shapes. When I started with D-Fuse and Scanner, with the sound and the video projections, what I talked to them about was the ideas, I just gave them starting points...

Penny Martin: This was towards producing an installation for the clothing?

Shelley Fox: Yeah, and this was to do with the idea of the memories, the portraits. Isn't it odd that our lives end up as a bunch of photographs in a box in a flea market? I find that really odd. You go through and you think, 'I wonder if the child is still alive, I wonder what he'd be...'. That's what we started to build around, the idea of the projection. What we ended up doing was actually putting forward our own family portraits, so it would be me, Ross, Mike from D-Fuse and Robin from Scanner, their family pictures, they range from around 1895, which was one of Ross's great grandparents, to about 1975.

It wasn't until Mike scanned them in that you could see how photography had changed in terms of printing and colouring and colour. When you're watching the video, they could be the same people from those postcards in the box on the flea market but they're our family. The film made with SHOWstudio holds the collection together. I think it gives it much more of a platform from a completely fashion business side. If we'd have done a show on the runway, you'd get those images, but I think for me, looking at that film is so special. It's so beautiful, and it sums up the very feelings that I got when I walked in the shop and saw the pillowcases. I think a lot more people will be able to relate to it.

What was great is that the whole thing was done after the selling, so that agenda was aside anyway. It just became a purely creative project, and I've probably enjoyed this project more than I've enjoyed any other collection we've done for a very long time. I felt that the people involved were all aiming for the same result, transcending a catwalk if you like.