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London Fashion Week: T minus five minutes until show time. The fashion editors, muses and offspring of the rich and famous have assembled, iPhones poised, ready to snap. Backstage, it’s panic stations: a maelstrom of make-up artists, stylists and clipboard touting assistants putting their Stan Smith trainers through their paces are barking frantic ‘over and outs’ into mouthpieces.

Fashion designer Holly Fulton admittedly likes her backstage a little less manic, although even her inner (very reluctant) diva struggles to resist the authority that comes from donning a headset. “They’re quite seductive, once you try one on,” she confesses, a faint smile forming at the corner of her mouth. “You need to look the part. It doesn’t take long before you’re all: ‘I want a personalised one, no – a crystallised one’.”

Irony-laced reveries of diamonté-encrusted headsets aside, Fulton’s backstage demeanour is, I imagine, much like her off-duty approach: unfazed and softly spoken, with moments of sardonic humour and wit. “It’s all still to unfold,” she says when we sit down before Christmas to talk about her forthcoming A/W16 collection.

“Fashion Week is quite a seductive thing for a designer."

"For me it’s the most exciting bit because it’s the only time you get to see the collection fully styled as your original vision. In those ten minutes before it goes out on the runway, you think: ‘did I get it all right? Maybe I should have had more of that, or more of this’.”

Regulars to Fulton’s shows and fans of her graphic designs will know these last minute moments of doubt are unfounded. For S/S16, which was shown back in September, her geometric shapes are still prominent, but in a less-is-more arrangement. Embellishment and embroidery feature alongside prints inspired by the surrealist artist Eileen Agar. These manifest themselves in pinwheels and floral patterns on crepe and silk organza, with sleek, seventies silhouettes, colourfully embroidered denim and floaty dresses. “We wanted to build on creating that cohesion in our silhouette."

"If anything, I’m guilty of having too many ideas, so the collection was about me learning to pull back and realise it’s OK to roll things over and create continuity."

"I have to remind myself that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.”

I wonder if Fulton’s prodigious output is partly her attempt at playing catch-up. She graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1999 (an MA from the Royal College of Art followed some years later when she turned 27) but it wasn’t until 2009 that she made her catwalk debut at London Fashion Week. Fulton’s decade skirting the outer periphery of the fashion world doesn’t sound as though it’s done her any harm.

She’s been an antique jewellery designer, worked in the knitwear industry on the Scottish Borders, run an art gallery and even represented Great Britain in the International Women’s Summit in Canberra. “I don’t even know how I got involved with that,” comes her nonplussed response to that particular chapter in her unlikely sounding employment history. Eventually, armed with her MA, she got a job straight after graduating from the RCA working in Paris on jewellery and accessories collections for Lanvin.

It might have been a “circuitous” path, as Fulton likes to call it, but it’s still not bad for a girl who at one stage had her heart set on wearing a white coat for a living, rather than designing the flamboyant, embellished creations that hang in her East London workshop. “In French class we were learning to say what we wanted to be when we grew up and I said: ‘I want to be a fashion designer. I want to be like Vivienne Westwood.’ Then I kind of segued towards being a vet,” she deadpans. She hung up her stethoscope before she got anywhere near giving the kiss of life to Barry the gerbil, and did a complete U-turn at the age of sixteen when she realised she’d changed her mind.

“I was a snappy dresser when I was younger. I would always be the one looking a bit different at the school disco,” she reflects. “Mum was a big influence. She collected issues of Vogue and kept all her clothes from the sixties. She used to make enamelled jewellery. My parents never put any pressure on us to go a certain route or into a lucrative career, just to do what we loved. Hence why they ended up with a fashion designer and an actor,” she quips. “I bet they’re regretting that now.”

Fulton’s catwalk debut dawned after she was introduced to Lulu Kennedy, the fashion consultant and founder of Fashion East, an incubator for up-and-coming design talent. This was in mid-December 2008, so when Kennedy asked her to be part of Fashion East in the February, Fulton was up against the clock to pull everything together in time. “Lulu was amazing, she told me to do as much as I could, even if it was only eight outfits. I somehow managed about 16 in the end. Once that happened the ball started rolling and that was it.”

She did two seasons with Fashion East, five with NEWGEN (the British Fashion Council’s scheme to support young designers) and a further two with Fashion Forward. “That’s the one thing that’s been pleasantly surprising about the whole experience – the amount of help available."

"There’s this misnomer that fashion is an unfriendly industry. My experience has been quite contrary to that."

The same can’t be said of the gender bias though. While Fulton notes that there are lots of women holding important roles in the industry, in terms of breakthrough designers, not as many make it all the way to the top. “It could be that a male perspective sees a woman differently, so their nuances in design are different. My designs don’t tend to be sexy. To me, a woman would want to look confident and strong. But ultimately success in the industry is down to the individual; so much in fashion is luck, or who you meet, or how charming you are…”

Fulton’s charm offensive is subtle, but there’s something about the combination of her down-to-earthness, her comic timing and her ironic retorts delivered with just a smidgeon of a smile that make her instantly likeable. Her style, she sighs, is “extensive”. She blames this on old French couture houses specialising in top-to-toe dressing. “I’ve always wanted to do it all. The creation of a total look is something I’m really fixated with.”

Fulton spends hours hand-drawing the graphic prints that form the skeleton of her designs. “I work in the most backwards way!” she confesses. “I love things that are incredibly detailed, super labour intensive – that’s what really excites me. I never want to lose that connection to what I’m doing. I still want to see where every bit of the pattern is going to sit, so I know what’s going where.”

As you might expect, she’s a fan of powerful women and is fascinated by the likes of Anjelica Huston for “her own incredibly strong kind of beauty and distinctive look”.

Laughter erupts after she deems her own wardrobe could once have been described as “borderline bad taste”.

Fulton loves a distinctive garment and believes it’s important to have some sort of presence to what you’re wearing, with lots of jewellery thrown on – the more Scandi-inspired and industrial-looking, the better.

Fulton’s magpie tendencies mean she’s often successful on the vintage sourcing front. Her most treasured finds include a pair of original sixties platforms (“they’re quite low key, actually. I like thinking about where they’ve been when they were in Edinburgh”); an Issey Miyake poncho (“it’s essentially a giant rectangle, which is my dream garment”) and a Chanel suit that once belonged to a politician’s wife. “It’s glitter tweed. When I wear it people treat me differently. There’s definitely 100 per cent more respect. That’s what I love about clothing, that it has that power.”

If there were ever a destination to debut some experimental looks, then London’s the place to do it.

By comparison Paris, Fulton says, is steeped in rich traditions, but isn’t so good at supporting and fostering contemporary creativity, not in the way that the capital is at least. “I don’t think you can make any fashion mistakes here. I would never say that something was wrong. Sometimes combinations that sound the most grotesque can be the best. ‘Is this amazing or is this hideous? What side of the line am I on?’ I love asking questions like that. Fashion should be challenging after all.”

Talking of challenges, the next few weeks will no doubt be full of them. The S/S16 collection hits the shelves and A/W16 the runway this month, but Fulton is taking it all in her stride with characteristic good humour.

And as for what she’ll be doing once London Fashion Week is over? “Getting into the recovery position.”Read more at:vintage prom dresses uk | sexy prom dresses