The two faces of London fashion The Emilia Wickstead look couldn't be further removed from Louise Gray's. But these brilliant British designers have far more in common than meets the eye. There's no clearer way to illustrate the diversity of British fashion now than putting the same woman - as we have done here with our model Ruby - in the clothes of the London designers Louise Gray and Emilia Wickstead. With their wildly contrasting aesthetics - New Lady versus Happy Punk? - these two labels could hardly be more different. One is worn by society gals and businesswomen, the other by hipsters and arty individualists (we'll leave you to decide which). But while their differences are obvious, what the two designers have in common is that each marches to the beat of her own drum. Wickstead's old-fashioned, made-to-measure approach is about giving women feminine pieces that make them feel like their best selves. Gray, meanwhile, wants women to feel like individuals, one-offs, so much so that she's not that keen on well-known people wearing her clothes - 'It might put off my customers.' In celebrity-endorsed 2012 you've got to love that. There are other similarities. Both are the daughters of what Gray calls 'stitchers' , women who sewed for a living. Both were initially passionate artists - Wickstead a painter and Gray a child who embroidered her father's slippers for fun. As teenagers they switched their attention to fashion and were adamant about studying at Central Saint Martins. 'If you want to be the best you go to the best,' says Wickstead, who did a BA in fashion and marketing, while Gray did the MA course in textiles. As students they remained steadfast in their ideas about what kind of fashion they wanted to create, and both started their labels soon after graduating. Not so many years later the result is two designers running thriving businesses and creating amazing clothes for women today - no compromises. Emilia Wickstead (left) and a model wearing one of her designs. Five years ago Emilia Wickstead was sewing in her rented flat by day, working on the door of a club by night, desperately trying to become a famous designer on the £5,000 her boyfriend had lent her on a strictly that's-your-lot basis. 'I had to build a business and create a collection from that,' says Wickstead, cheerily - she's never far from a big grin. 'I couldn't afford to carry any stock, the recession had set in and buyers weren't buying, so I thought I'd show the collection to people and then make it in their size. That's how it started'. Today Wickstead's made-to-measure label hangs in the wardrobes of such women as the supermodel Natalia Vodianova and Samantha Cameron (who wore Wickstead both on polling day in 2010 and the following day outside 10 Downing Street). The designer now works from an elegant two-storey shop-cum-salon in smartest Belgravia, where next Saturday she'll hold her second London Fashion Week catwalk show. In other news, the boyfriend has been recently upgraded to husband. The salon is a London version of the couturier's atelier - upstairs a calm and chic shop with smooth wooden floors and rails of dresses and skirts in pleasing tonal shades. Here, at the start of each season, clients attend personal presentations of the new collection. Afterwards they can order the pieces they like, sometimes whole wardrobes for the season, which, after a fitting, will be made in their size at the company's workshop in Milan. Downstairs is the suite of changing-rooms where they have one-on-ones, usually with Wickstead herself. 'We see this place as a salon for women,' says the 28-year-old. They can come and have a chat, relax. They can come before or after working hours to fit in with their schedules. It's a nice environment and a different way to shop.' This personal touch, old-fashioned but utterly modern in its vision of luxury, is what makes the business unique and keeps her clients loyal. Wickstead herself, tall and lightly tanned, swishes through the rooms in her own classy designs, like some free spirit from an Edith Wharton novel, the embodiment of her brand. She grew up in New Zealand (she still has the accent), the daughter of a single mother who ran her own made-to-measure business. 'I gained a huge insight into how everything worked from that,' says Wickstead. 'Sometimes students graduate expecting a world of fashion that's not realistic, but aged eight I was already used to the late nights or mum picking me up from school three hours late.' When Wickstead was 14 her mother married and they moved to Milan and a rather different life. 'At that age I had short hair and wore hooded tops,' she says, grimacing. In Milan the women had long hair and dressed for their men. Even the girls at school were dressing to complement their figures. I'm sure that's been a major influence on the way I work, why I've gone back to this old world of couture, this bygone era. All of a sudden I wanted a beautiful cashmere coat instead of a high-street thing. I was surrounded by this good taste for life and it made such an impact. At Saint Martins her luxurious, ladylike aesthetic was rather different to what the more avant-garde students were creating. 'Everyone did these crazy things but I stuck to what I believed in', she says. She was one of four from a class of 40 given a coveted place in the end-of-year press show. Two styles from that initial collection continue today. 'Whether you like what I do or hate it, I do stand alone', she says with confidence. For me a high neck is as sexy as a plunging neck, if not more so. More and more women are realising that. Look at Kate Middleton... This season for the first time Wickstead has sold her collection wholesale to Matches boutique. She'll gradually open up the line to a few other select stores, but it is the made-to-measure element of her brand that she hopes to expand. 'You have to know what your client wants otherwise what's the point?' she says. 'There's nothing that I love more than knowing a woman has worn something and felt amazing in it. That is equally as satisfying as putting together a collection for fashion week. For me, it's the best of both worlds.' Designer Louise Gray. 'The word that I use over and over is fun because that's how I feel about dressing.' Louise Gray is describing her look, but really she doesn't need to put it into words; it couldn't be more apparent. At tea in a West End restaurant four egg-yolk-coloured smiley faces dangle down each side of her head. Only this morning she customised these accessories, felt-tipping the faces on to a pair of yellow disc earrings given to her by her husband ('He's going to kill me! she says, beaming) and attaching them to smaller pair of yellow smiley-faced earrings. The effect is fun times four. Throw in a rainbow-coloured jumper, a mess of white-blonde hair, red, yellow and pink nails and slashes of cobalt-blue kohl around the eyes and you have a 30-year-old who has the most singular, fresh look in the room, possibly in the whole of central London. You can see why children as young as 11 write to her wanting work experience and why she is rumoured to be collaborating with Topshop on a make-up range. Gray is the daughter of a fashion-loving seamstress ('In the 1980s she had a perm and big jumpers and trainers. I'd look at her and think, "Mum looks like the people on TV!" ') and one of four sisters, so her wardrobe was always a home-made, mixy-matchy sort of affair. The family lived an hour outside of Aberdeen, far from high-street clothes shops, so she made things herself. 'That DIY aesthetic, it's been in my mind all the time,' she says. Her strong sense of style became apparent while she was at primary school. 'For two years I wouldn't wear a jumper that didn't match my tights,' she remembers. My grandmother gave me a big tartan jumper one Christmas and I refused to wear it until my mum found me some tartan tights. And so a diva was born... hardly. Gray in all her gentle giggly-ness has none of that about her. She had no particular desire to be the kind of fashion designer with her name on a label. She was a textiles person, specialising in embroidery, and assumed that after Saint Martins she would stitch for other fashion houses. But then Lulu Kennedy, the founder of the Fashion East collective, saw her final show and suggested she do a collection. Gray agreed. 'What I was essentially doing was setting up a business but I didn't really think of that,' she admits. I go into these things at the deep end and then just say, "OK, what do I need to know?"  Gray's heroines number the feminist punk singer Poly Styrene and Mary Quant, women who defied convention in both their personal style and their careers. 'Since starting my label [in 2008] I've found a much more feminist approach to fashion,' she says. 'Be yourself, don't be scared to be individual is the message I'd like to give.' It's a message born out by her collections, which are sold in Harvey Nichols: dresses, knits and shirts in a joyful palette, with a seemingly harum-scarum collaging of textiles and crafty detail that belies the careful workmanship - all her clothes are made in Britain, knitwear in Wales - and conjures up a cheerfully rebellious young woman. 'My customers are the younger girls who want the whole head-to-toe look or someone slightly older who wants a special piece in her wardrobe, like a statement coat', she says. 'She's able to carry it. She's not the sort of woman who buys something to make her feel thinner.' That, I suspect, is the nearest Gray will ever get to a cutting remark. As she says of herself: 'I feel like I'm a real optimist and it's very nice if you give yourself away to that a bit. You don't have to be so serious about fashion. It should be jolly and fun.