Peter Jensen

Danish-born designer Peter Jensen has garnered a devoted fan base since launching his eponymous label ten years ago, for his offbeat men's and women's collections. At the time of his first collection and show nearly ten years ago (for A/W01), the fresh Central St Martins Menswear Graduate was working with emerging talents who subsequently became significant fashion industry figures.

Here, Jensen reminisces about his first foray onto the London Fashion Week schedule, with a debut collection and show characterised by zero-budget, gung-ho spirit, sheer determination and a smattering of spontaneity.

Peter Jensen: Inspiration for my first collection, called Mary, came from a book I had read called A Case of Hollywood, which tells the story of an unsolved murder in early 20th century Hollywood.

The collection was both men's and womenswear and it was made using mostly secondhand fabrics, with my gran doing all the knitwear. I didn't have a studio then, so it was all done in my flat, on the floor. I didn't even have a table to work on! It was good fun though, I didn't think it would have any impact, so I just did exactly what I wanted to do.

The collection was shown during London Fashion Week in a nightclub in Mayfair called 10 Tokyo Joe's. There was no catwalk, so the audience just stood or sat around wherever. I had a slideshow in the background showing pictures of people wearing the collection that Alasdair McLellan had taken at my friend's house.

There was a mix of models and friends in the show, but mostly friends who just walked around the audience, not quite sure what to do. There was one girl whose face somehow wasn't right for the look of the collection, so we had to quickly improvise and put a mask on her! Unfortunately, that meant she couldn't see anything – so she kept walking into people and bumping into chairs until one of the models saved her by wrenching her back behind the curtain. Another thing I had decided just before the show was that the girls should have a lot of jewellery on, so I called my friend, the designer Roksanda Ilincic, and she came down with all her jewellery and draped it on them. She also created the invitation for the show, which I think was meant to look like me.

James Anderson writes for Another Man, Another, Fantastic Man, i-D, Arena Homme Plus, Harrods, PIN-UP and Nowness.com