My first job was designing womenswear for M&S. It was just after I had graduated from the Fashion & Textiles course at Middlesex Poly. My ideas were too bold for the M&S customer, so I only lasted 3 months there. Some of my samples found their way home with the buyers, it transpired.

Betty Jackson wanted some hats for a show. My ex, Jono (Jonathan Platt), was working for her at the time as a pattern cutter. I made her some little paper conical hats. We thought ‘Capellino’ meant ‘little hat’ in Italian, but we spelt it with one ‘p’ so that changes the meaning a bit to something more like ‘child’s hat’ or ‘thin hair.’ It was never really intended to be a long-term thing.

Our Moscow Olympics collection was our first foray into clothes. We joined a group called Individual Clothes Show. They had a joint catwalk show and we had only bracelets and earrings to show, so we made 5 pieces of clothing, a Perspex hat and various bracelets, all printed with a design that was cobbled together from a swimming instruction book and some geographical illustrations. By the time the orders were delivered, Russia had invaded Afghanistan and 66 countries had decided to boycott the affair. All of a sudden it was in the news, and we got some great press — a big page in the Daily Mail. But we never set out to make a political statement.