It’s 8.45 on a Friday morning and Jimmy Choo creative director Sandra Choi is in head-start mode, relishing the silence of her London office before it fills with staff. Her dark-brown glass desk – a vintage find from Alfies Antiques – is swamped with fabric swatches, sketches and ring binders, diaries, notes and pens in every colour imaginable. “I’ve got about 400 lists here,” Choi laughs. “Yeah, it’s chaotic, but it’s my mess.”

On the stark white shelves are piles of glossy fashion reference books, with yellow Post-it notes bookmarking pages, spilling out onto the floor behind her, along with what look to be shoe prototypes. “Oh no – these are all mine!” says Choi, one of the lucky few women who can justifiably argue excessive shoe ownership as a job requirement.