Interview: The woman who brought us Nicole Farhi: 'What's important is to feel good in yourself, not because of what you wear' - the thoughts of a designer we love

Designers, especially if they are women, epitomise the image their clothes create. Their own bodies are their first raw material. Think of Chanel in the Thirties, posing at Deauville in her own chic and casual garments, making every other woman look over- dressed and out of date.

Nicole Farhi - French, fortyish, mother, wife and career woman - sums up to perfection what her customers wannabe. Relaxed and successful in a very modern way; coolly elegant but no slave to fashion, she is what she sells.

Her clothes never suffer from the corset-like constriction favoured by certain male designers, nor do they exaggerate or distort the female body. They are easy, curvy, sometimes shapeless, sometimes silhouetting, made up in neutral colours that go with everything. They never shout new money, new body or new lover, but shift the focus on to the person wearing them. The Farhi label is not cheap (say, pounds 350 for a 'good' jacket) but women are prepared to save up.

This week, Nicole Farhi opens a Bond Street emporium. It will stock her entire range: clothes for men and women; shoes and handbags; a large collection of socks (Ms Farhi is very keen on socks: essential under trousers, she says), hats, jewellery, the lot. There is also a restaurant, and a comfy area strewn with magazines and newspapers. It is a big financial investment, but not really a risk. Over the last decade her label has moved quietly up the bestselling list, more noticed by customers than by the fashion press, until today she is one of Britain's most popular designers.

Home is Hampstead. The centrepiece of her drawing room is a glass table, 5ft square, piled with photography and art books and pieces of sculpture. There is a copy of the new left-wing magazine Red Pepper and a tray of coffee brought by a Filipina maid. The coffee is hot and strong. Ms Farhi - delicate limbs, slight body and wild abundant hair - has lived in this house for 14 years, first with designer Stephen Marks, latterly with playwright David Hare, whom she married two years ago.

A conservatory leads into the garden, dripping with autumnal damp. At the opposite end of the room, green light filters through the trees concealing the house from outside eyes. Built in 1817, it is one of the oldest in Hampstead. Now it is filled with eclectic objects and furniture assembled on Nicole Farhi's travels. Let us start at the beginning.

'I was born in Nice. My parents were Turkish, but my mother had lived in France since she was a small child; my father arrived in his early twenties, fleeing from Ataturk. I was brought up speaking French but my parents spoke Ladino (a Spanish dialect used by Sephardic Jews) at home.

'My father sold rugs when he first arrived; then he was a salesman and then he had a little business. He died many years ago but I'm still very close to my mother.

'I had one brother, 18 months older than me, but we had a lot of cousins and were a very close-knit family. At weekends we would all go out together, grandparents, aunts, cousins, about 25 of us all driving one behind the other, to picnic in the little villages outside Nice. It was a wonderful, warm and loving childhood, so it's funny that I couldn't wait to be 18 and leave.

'I was a bit of a wild child, and I preferred my friends to those Sundays en famille. I was enthralled with the idea of living in a big city after a small town.' How did her parents feel? 'My mother was a wonderful support; my father was very conservative. What he had in mind for me was a nice man, getting married, settling down and having a family. He couldn't envisage me having a career.

'I had first rebelled against my Jewishness when I was 13 or so, against the ghetto in which we all lived together, the clique in that small town: which it was in those days. I wanted life to be broader. Above all I wanted to forget about the war. We'd lost members of our family in the concentration camps. My parents had gone into hiding in Creuse, a little town in central France. For them it was very important not to forget, and I went through a phase when I didn't want to be reminded.'

And now? She sighs, hesitates, strokes her face: 'I am Jewish and a lot of what I say and how I behave is because of that, but it's never been a big issue for me.' She laughs nervously.

Is she an observant Jew? 'If I were I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. It's Yom Kippur. I didn't even know until I rang a friend this morning and she wouldn't come to the phone. It makes me shiver. I could cry.'

I am astonished to see that it is true. Curled up on her big cream-coloured sofa, Ms Farhi's face glistens with tears. She gets up and pours us both another cup of coffee, then wipes her eyes and pushes the tears off her cheeks. 'I fought with my parents so much about this. But for my father, after the war, to have a daughter like me - I feel today how sad it must have been for them that I refused my Jewishness. At one stage I even got engaged to a Catholic man.

'I loved my father; I think it was probably one of those relationships where I was in love with him, but I couldn't talk to him. I held his hand and felt his warmth, but we couldn't communicate. Words frightened him, although he diffused love. My brother was a much calmer character and did not confront my parents.

'I could hear them talking at night and my mother saying, 'You've got to let her go - this is not the 19th century and I don't want her to have my life'. So I closed the door and I went. Since then, to some extent, my mother has lived vicariously through me. She's been incredibly non-judgmental of my life.

'I was 18 in 1965 when I went to Paris. I've always been confident and to be 18, in Paris - there is no other city in the world like it. Paris is generous to 18- year-olds. I went to a fashion school for two years where I had a very eccentric teacher. We had hardly any technique classes; my teacher thought it more important that we drew freely and went to the movies and experienced life as a whole.

'When I was a student I didn't have much money, but very luckily I soon began to sell sketches. All the stores had bureaux de style and would buy sketches from young designers for 50 francs each. They liked my work, even in my first year. I might sell five, and then I'd take all my friends out to a restaurant.

'I never finished at college: I left after two years and worked first in Italy, designing children's clothes, and after that as a freelance for six or seven years, taking on all the work I could get: fabric design, menswear - if I knew somebody was looking for a designer I'd go for it.

'I had one serious relationship, in my early twenties, and then some non-serious affairs: it was a good and happy time. Stephen Marks was working for Pierre d'Alby, one of my clients, so we met on one of his trips. He had such charisma and presence that I just fell in love with him. He was very good-looking, and still is . . .' She trails away, afraid of hurting his present wife, so we skip the details. They fell in love. In 1975 they had a daughter, Candice. Ms Farhi was very happy about both events.

'Our daughter was born seven weeks premature because I'd been travelling about so much. I felt extremely strong and happy and didn't see why I shouldn't go to London or India or Italy. I had gone down to Nice to visit my parents and Candice was born there. I felt terribly responsible. She had to stay in hospital and I didn't hold her for four weeks.

'But after that she was a very easy baby, and became the most moved- around child ever, going backwards and forwards to London, attending all my fittings. When she was five I had to settle somewhere because she had to start school, so in 1980 Stephen bought this house. And in two weeks' time Candice starts at the Sorbonne.

'I would have liked to have more children, yes, but . . . .' She shakes her head, smiles enigmatically and remains silent. Then she adds: 'I'm very lucky. I've got three stepchildren now: Joe, who's 19, and Lewis and Darcey, twins of 15. They're David's children and at weekends they all live here.'

They married two years ago. 'When I met him I knew he was the man I had always been looking for; it's as simple as that. I knew that with him it was forever. I am moved that I love him so much; that after having wanted this love for so long I have found it in the middle of my life.'

Back to the clothes: what is the basic rule of dressing well? Who better to ask than Nicole Farhi, chic and tender, the embodiment of fulfilled modern womanhood, perched in the corner of a pale sofa.

'I can only say to women, they must know themselves. Apart from that - though it may sound strange coming from a fashion designer - it's not so important. What's important is to feel good in yourself, not because of what you wear.'

Nicole Farhi's new store, at 158 New Bond Street, W1, opens on 22 September.

(Photograph omitted)