On the time of my tiny store my brother was in Tokyo and was capable of go to the catwalk reveals of Kansai, Issey, and many others, and he purchased items straight from the catwalk and he despatched the delights over to me. I had a bentwood rack with about 10 issues hanging on it, and I put some issues within the home windows. All the blokes who ran the denims shops in Edinburgh got here by and simply laughed. However I’ve at all times mentioned in the event that they’re laughing at our home windows we’re doing one thing proper. I [also] met Michiko Koshino [the London-based Japanese designer]; her beetle coats had been the must-have in London, so I purchased these they usually had been very profitable. Then we moved to [her current location on] Jeffrey Avenue [in 1982], and the enterprise simply grew organically.

How was the response to what you had been doing? Promoting all of those extremely avant garde designers in what was then a reasonably conservative metropolis?

Properly, it was sluggish, very sluggish! However saying that, certainly one of my greatest buddies has shopped with me because the very starting, and a few people who find themselves from Edinburgh, locals, had been simply in they usually have shopped with me because the ’80s. There was a marketplace for me, and we at all times had an unlimited selection, from Bodymap to Mugler, a massively numerous providing. I don’t actually like to make use of the phrase industrial, however I assume we’re: We have now at all times offered, and we’re nonetheless right here. [As for the archive sale,] a Bodymap cardigan went to somebody younger, a pair of Yohji trousers to a buyer in New Zealand, and one of many Japanese jackets to a lady visiting from China. We’re fairly ageless.

You talked about Mugler; it was a bit extra shocking for me to listen to that was within the combine….

Mugler I liked. Very horny and fitted, which is far more my fashion. However on the identical time we had somebody like Katharine Hamnett, who was an unbelievable vendor. Hamnett jogs my memory of the time I used to be on some late evening broadcast factor, speaking about trend, and I went with an area hairdresser, Brian Drumm, and my then-boyfriend Sandy from the [shoe company] Schuh. It went down like a ton of bricks. Brian mentioned to me throughout it, ‘Who in Edinburgh goes to put on white trousers [by Katharine Hamnett], with our climate?!’ Afterwards, they left of their Porsches and I walked as much as the bar Buster Browns. That perspective reveals what I used to be up towards [laughs], however nonetheless these Hamnett trousers offered very well.