'I'm proud to be recognised'

Crowned British Designer of the Year recently, Phoebe Philo talks about her success at Chloe, how she loves being pregnant, and the truth about that feud with Stella McCartney

The Raphael gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, was stuffed to the rafters recently with anyone who is anyone in the fashion world when Phoebe Philo, eight months pregnant, walked up to accept her award as British Designer of the Year.

She took a deep breath and tried to get her words out amid the whoops coming from the direction of her family.

Cutting the prettiest picture of pregnancy in a black sequined chiffon frock (her own design, of course), she thanked her team, her boss at Chloe for believing in her, and laughed, "Whoah, my baby's kicking like mad!" And then ran back to her table to fall into the arms of her handsome new husband.

This has been an incredible year of life-changing, talent-confirming events for the 31-year-old. As if it weren't enough to be one of the most successful young designers in Paris, who has turned Chloe's pretty dresses, perfectly cut pants and swishy bags into objects of desire, Philo is also half of one of London's coolest It Couples.

The fact that she has been voted British Designer of the Year marks a symbolic homecoming for a girl who has slogged away in Paris for nine years, even though she has always spent her weekends in London.

Family first

She has kept coming back because of her unbreakable attachment to her family, her horse, Toby, who lives with her parents, and her long-term boyfriend - they've been together about five years.

This July, Philo finally married 38-year-old art dealer Max Wigram in a simple ceremony. She had found out she was pregnant in April, an event she's been looking forward to for most of her life.

"Since I was 13, I've known I wanted to be a relatively young mother," she beams. "I designed my own wedding dress - in a creamy silk cotton, very long, with pintucks," she says. "And I had a circle of silk flowers in my hair. I couldn't face a big do and a fuss. But it was very romantic."

Pregnant and calmed down she may be, but for those who spied Philo running around Notting Hill with gold teeth and six-inch nail extensions in the 1990s, there is no forgetting that she was the most notable "wild child" on the scene.

No one who saw her then (myself included) would ever have suspected "Pheebs", clattering around in impossible heels after Stella McCartney, of possessing an ounce of professional seriousness.

She and McCartney had met as students at Central Saint Martins and, in 1996, when she and Stella went off to Paris to work at Chloe, I had her down as one of London's more annoying fashion flibbertigibbets.

Proves herself

How wrong I was. Ever since she was appointed head designer after McCartney left in 2001 to start her own label under the auspices of Gucci, Philo has gone on to prove herself over and over, producing results that pushed sales figures almost off the scale this year.

There are plans to open 25 shops all over the world and to branch into babywear, eyewear, perfume and more.

As Chloe chairman and CEO Ralph Toledano says: "A few weeks ago, we thought this year's sales were 50 per cent up, but now it's 60. There is not a store in the world that can keep our ‘Bracelet' bag in stock for more than a couple of weeks."

What makes Chloe so great?

It's those trousers (which Philo and her all-female team work on with forensic attention), the frilly tops, the gorgeous silky dresses (as worn by Kylie Minogue, and replicated by Tesco), and the bags (as copied on every street market from Brixton to Bangkok).

It's a source of some amusement that the Bracelet bag actually started life on a street market - inspired by a cheap ethnic bangle Philo picked up on her travels. It now retails at £700 (Dh4,793).

What Philo does is pretty and populist - without being high falutin'. As far back as her St Martins days, when British fashion - excited by the likes of Hussein Chalayan and Alexander McQueen - was at its most abstractly aggressive, Philo stubbornly stood up for what she believed in.

"I just wanted to make a pair of trousers that made my back look good," she says, "rather than a pair that represented the Holocaust or something".

When it came time to take the reins at Chloe, she'd learned a lot, but the corporate responsibility of being in the top job - she is rumoured to be on a six-figure salary - was something else.

Her appointment, as a complete unknown (albeit McCartney's right-hand woman), was a surprise to many in the industry, especially as much bigger names were touted for the job.

Others gossiped that it was Philo who had come up with some of Chloe's best ideas all along. That innuendo got whipped up into stories that she and McCartney had some major falling-out when the two parted company professionally.

Both have refused ever to say a word to each other's detriment in the press. All Philo will say, with a sigh, is: "I've decided it's just because the papers like the excuse to put in the name of a Beatle whenever they can."

To judge by the sight of them nattering at Helmut Newton's memorial in Paris in July (sharing girl-talk about their pregnancies), if ever there was a strain between them, it's well and truly over.

That doesn't alter the fact that things at Chloe changed dramatically the minute McCartney left. The cheeky, brassy, "ghetto fabulous" clothes she and Stella sent down the runway disappeared overnight. "God, yes," she laughs.

"I'm so over the trashy 1980s thing." Instead, she makes glamorous but easy-to-wear pieces that spring directly from what she wants to wear. "It is hard to imagine any young woman who wouldn't have salivated," wrote Suzy Menkes in the International Herald Tribune, of the latest collection.

Style and beauty

"I changed the direction," Philo admits. "The older I get, the more driven I am by real style and beauty. I think that's much more important than ‘a look'. For me, fashion is really about the way you wear it, the person rather than the piece."

Philo has achieved all this while commuting exhaustingly on the Eurostar between London and Paris, working at Chloe headquarters in the Faubourg Saint-HonorÇ during the week, and returning to Max at weekends. No amount of success, she says, will ever divert her from being a home-girl at heart.

She and Max bought a large detached house with a garden in Kilburn two years ago, which, she says fondly, "reminds me of the houses I was brought up in. Family is what she cares about more than anything. Having a baby is a serious, serious priority", she insists.

She is finishing work next week, and will stay in London until the baby is born at St George and St Elizabeth. She has already given her team direction for next season, and will be back at her desk next March.

Phoebe was born in Paris in 1973, when her father, Richard, a chartered surveyor, and her mother, Celia, a graphic designer who worked on David Bowie's Aladdin Sane cover, were working there.

Philo kept up her party-animal reputation right through her early years. At Chloe she was once photographed pole-dancing with McCartney and fellow des