quotes by Phoebe Philo, creative director of Celine, from an interview by Susannah Frankel in The Independent UK…

• “One of the reasons why I try to use fabrics and cuts that don’t go out of fashion is because I like the idea of women buying the clothes and then…I don’t know what the word is…cherish sounds over-emotional for a relationship with a piece of clothing…but for a woman to feel proud, satisfied, comfortable and powerful in them, to wear them and get on with their lives.”

• “It’s pretty masculine. That’s how I dress and I think it’s quite liberating for women not to have to be so preoccupied with different silhouettes, with different things.”

• “I never had a massive desire to buy clothes…This is always a bit difficult to talk about, but I don’t really like shopping. I don’t get a great feeling out of it.”

• “Historically, the bits of Celine I knew from researching, generally over the years, were typically Parisian – a pleated skirt, a silk blouse and a blazer. And I quite like the conservativeness of that, that Parisian chic, that conservative woman. Bourgeois. A bit saucy.”

• “It’s never been important to me that my name is above shop windows,” she says, “and I get a lot of comfort out of having something I can stand behind. Let Celine be the name and the front of it…”

• “Shall we have a fag?”