The Wardrobe with Kate Phelan

For one of fashion’s most respected figures, Kate Phelan does not, in her own words, “live my life along fashion lines.” When we meet on a Monday morning, she’s just spent the weekend on her allotment in Putney Vale on London’s south side. “In this industry, you’re meant to look and be fabulous all the time,” she says, “but I’ve always hidden away a bit.”

Kate, 47, thought she’d be turning the lights out at British Vogue, where she worked for 19 years and rose to be fashion director. But then she surprised everyone by moving to Topshop last autumn to become the fast-fashion empire’s creative director – taking up a new role created just for her. “I’d led a charmed life,” she says. “It was time.”

The fashion world had changed around her. Kate started at UK Vogue in 1987, when it was still edited by Anna Wintour, initially interning under the inspirational guidance of styling star Sarajane Hoare; spent a few years on the then-infant – and, radical for its time – Marie Claire; returned to Vogue under Alexandra Shulman; and, over the years, watched it morph into the rather more high-street-facing title it is today.

“In the early days at Vogue, we’d go off on a shoot with Peter Lindbergh and do a couple of shots before a three-hour lunch of fruits de mer,” says Kate. “I remember a wonderful time in Deauville, when it was Linda Evangelista’s 21st birthday on the day of the shoot. Or maybe her 18th. Anyway, it was a lot more wine and fruits de mer than work,” says Kate. “But when we did work, there was an amazing sense of creating something unique.” Her own shoots, working with photographers of a Tim Walker/Terry Richardson vintage, are notable for her ability to spot those singular pieces that define the season, and her focus is on graphic clarity. Her own wardrobe – of navy V-necks, black polo necks, crisply cut jackets and, above all, white shirts – isn’t dissimilar.

Her connection to Topshop is nothing new. She’d been styling the advertising shoots for the last six years and was finally brought more firmly into the fold following a dinner hosted by its owner, Philip Green, at Harry’s Bar last February, where a particularly decisive conversation took place. “I think I realised that maybe I didn’t want to be the oldest person on the shoot, jumping on and off planes, looking after 16-year-old models,” she says. “Though I still get to do a bit of that.” Now her job entails overseeing the look and feel of the vast rumbling fashion machine that Topshop is. Between October and December, she travelled to Toronto for a store opening, performed spokeswomanly duties at a press day in New York, checked up on a new site in Las Vegas, and went to Melbourne for another store opening. She has also begun getting used to working with a team of 300.

It’s unlikely that her new job will give her any more time to tend her vegetable patch, however, where she grows, “Oh, you know, the usual: aubergines, potatoes, cabbages, chillies – everything you need.”