Edward Meadham, one half of London’s most elusive design duos – Meadham Kirchhoff; the other half is Benjamin Kirchhoff - has spoken in a rare interview in the Independent and named Vivienne Westwood as the living designer to whom he is most indebted.

‘She was incredibly important to me when I was younger,’ says Meadham. ‘She's the only one I can think of who has done, as far as I can tell, exactly what she wanted, forever, and seems to still be very much in control of what she does.’

Westwood’s spirit of riot, rebellion and celebration is one that is never far from the Meadham Kirchhoff ethos – for autumn winter 2012-13, they presented a host of disco-going girls who wore clothes made of tinsel and threw glitter in the air. For spring, they were doll-like effigies of Courtney Love – Meadham is nigh on obsessed with her – who paraded around candy floss-coloured balloon arches.

This joyful new aesthetic goes against the hard-edged goth-androgyny that first brought them to the attention of fashion editors and earned them the reputation for not being especially bubbly people, but it works. ‘It was about all the things I'm not,’ Meadham says of the autumn winter collection. ‘About all the things I've always hated myself for not being... The shows are entirely my way of being nice, you know; they're my way of being really nice. Because I'm not nice. I want everybody to sit there and feel completely joyful and not hate themselves for five seconds.’

If that’s not a good reason to love them, we don’t know what is.