Do you think that interning and that kind of experience is more valuable than a degree?

I wouldn’t say necessarily more valuable than a degree but I definitely think it's valuable and I really believe in the resurgence of apprenticeships. There are a lot of people who are much more suited to those kind of careers and they're just as valuable as a degree. I wouldn't say that my degree wasn't valuable because I just loved having three years at university!

It's quite monumental to have seen two female creative directors presenting their debut collections at Lanvin and Dior over Paris Fashion Week. As a women-led company are you ever frustrated by the lack of women in top level jobs in fashion?

It is very frustrating. I've not been in luxury fashion, it's always been highstreet but generally the business is always run by men. However good and amazing the creatives are, they don't get to lead it that often. That was one of the things that was inspiring about going to Topshop. When I went back to Topshop, Jane [Shepherdson] had just become the MD and it made a huge, huge difference to even what we could do with the product. It was much more about what women wanted and it wasn't so much about 'we need x amount of black dresses'. It could be a much more inspirational business in that way. And I think women are much more led by intuition and actually men don't understand that so well.

Are you ever nostalgic for that slower pace, before social media and before brands were churning out six collections a year?

In some ways. Social media has enabled customers to become much more knowledgeable about everything so they are much more demanding than they ever were but they understand a lot better than they ever did too. On the other hand, I think it's made people who work in the industry think that they can market anything to anybody. It's not necessarily about the quality and the beauty of the actual product and I think that's something that comes with a slower pace.

When people say there's no room for magazines anymore, actually there is, because things look way more beautiful than on screen if the paper's gorgeous and there's attention to the colours. You can get the colours to be true whereas on screen, it's something that we battle with all the time. However good we make the colours, somebody's screen is adjusted to a different colour and then they buy it and say: that's not how it looked on the screen. It's made things more throwaway generally.

I often used to think that fashion was a very, very frivolous career and in many ways it is but actually it employs a huge amount of people and it's very hard work – there's an awful lot to learn about business as well as about the product itself.