Interview with designer and label-founder Katie Walker:

fuk: How long ago did you come up with the idea for Vedette?

Katie: I got the idea for Vedette about two and a half years ago. My sister was at a match at Highbury and came back with her replica kit - she is absolutely crazy about Arsenal and her boyfriend was a bit funny about her wearing it. He basically thought it wasn't sexy enough.

This was a Tony Adams shirt she was wearing wasn't it?

Yeah, she adores Tony Adams. We then went off to Liberty and bought some Irish linen and I embroidered 'I Love Arsenal' around the border. I made her a little hippy summer A line skirt in white linen and she was working at a national newspaper at the time and the fashion editor was like 'we've got to shoot it' but we couldn't do that because I realised there would be licensing issues. So, I then spent the next year trying to sort out deals with the clubs and Arsenal and Chelsea seemed very up for it, which has been amazing and fantastic.

So with the licensing your collections are official club merchandise. Did you have much of a problem persuading the clubs?

I tried most clubs in the premiership and Arsenal and Chelsea were definitely up for it from the beginning. But I hope that if this is a success the other clubs will follow. We got quite a warm response but quite rightly, because this is a new thing, they didn't understand what I was trying to achieve.

You've started off with two London clubs, traditional rivals. What team do you support?

I'm a cricket fan. My sisters are Villa and Arsenal and they are both absolutely besotted by football, I've grown up with football because my father was obsessed by football and they are. I'm from Northamptonshire and the irony is I think that having that little bit of distance and no specific team allegiance makes it easier for me to design across the board, like come up with interesting looks for very club without thinking 'Oh I'm going to make them look terrible because they are my arch rivals'.

The Chelsea collection is very glam isn't it?

With The Chelsea collection we're talking very glam, very China White very Rod Stewart's girlfriend , all the girls are blonde and I have told them all to prance around like they go everywhere in a helicopter. Arsenal is very much more like the kind of girls I knew at school in London: much tougher, cooler, they think that Tom Boy is sexy and fashionable and yeah... hard.

Arsenal is a bit more street and Chelsea is a bit more glam. I was definitely influenced by their stadiums, Stamford Bridge vs Highbury.