“Fashion is political; that’s got to be part of the reason why people buy the clothes,” she says. “When I launched, I’d tread softly; now I’m much more straightforward. I’ve seen the miserable conditions people live in, making the products that we buy on the high street.

Minney believes that a growing number of people are turned on, not off, by this. She doesn’t go as far as to say that the clothes aren’t as stylish as they could be, but she agrees that people fall in love with them after, not before, they put them on. “The feel of the clothes is a strong point; we don’t use synthetic materials, so people are rediscovering hand-embroidered fabrics and organic cotton,” she says.

Read the article “From rags to righteous” at timesonline.co.uk