Why did it feel like the right time to launch an accessories brand together? What was it in response to?

Charlotte Stockdale: It was a long, slow burner actually. I started doing Victoria’s Secret in about 2000 and Katie started working with me just after. Towards the last five years we got really carried away and just loved doing it and we realised we loved to make things. The wonderful thing about that show is the costumes are not produced so we had a lot of fun and a lot of freedom. We’ve been working with brands over the years and we really enjoy making things; we enjoy the satisfaction of succeeding in something beautiful. We also work really hard and travel a lot and it was back in the days of VS that I would constantly lose my phone under a bunch of fabric, feathers or bras. So we’d tie our phones to ribbons and hang them around our necks. We thought, shall we just make something for ourselves that’s nice? So we made a zip [lanyard] ourselves a couple of years ago that was not as beautiful as these now but it was plastic with a rubber end. We started wearing it and we had about 1,000 made and gave them to people.

Katie Lyall: That was two years ago and there are still people in my life who are still using them.

Charlotte: It was an extraordinary range of people. Some of [Patrick] Demarchelier’s assistants used them for their light meters; Katie’s friend’s mum who is a matron at the London Hospital; a lot of the Fendi team. Then we thought, you know what, we’ve talked a lot over the years about doing our own thing. We’re not going to stop doing the other things like working with Fendi and at Garage.

Katie: There are really fun cases and then there are gorgeous, expensive cases that are quite simple but there isn’t that in-between that is fun and you can add some personality to it and make it your own in the way that people use stickers on their notebook or handbag.

Charlotte: We felt that this whole category of tech hadn’t been translated in a luxury way. There’s some really cool stuff but that idea of approaching it like a leather desk collection had not been explored.

Katie: Next year we’re going to have portable chargers, covered in leather that you can also put your initials on. You can grow a little collection.

Few brands have been able to create fashion tech that is as functional as it is stylish, that can be seamlessly incorporated into our lives. Was it a challenge marrying functionality and style?

Charlotte: We all went into it thinking it would be really easy. We made it with a very, very experienced company in China. They were like, no problem we can do this and then it came back and we were like, that’s not quite luxury.

Katie: In function there are things that can’t be flexible, like making sure all four corners are covered on the best phone cases. So when you drop your phone, obviously it’s not completely proof but it saves it much more. That’s something we really didn’t want to be flexible on and normally they would be open and that’s how you wrap leather around. So the challenge was to make sure it was a leather that was wrappable but still beautiful. You have to love tech and really know your instinctive luxury levels.