Interview: Jonathan Kelsey, fashion designer

HE’S designed red carpet shoes for Kylie and Madonna, so can Jonathan Kelsey recreate such glamour on the high street?

Jonathan Kelsey is cooing over a pair of champagne-hued glittery slingback stilettos with a black satin heel. Girlish and saccharine sweet, they lie somewhere between Disney princess and Studio 54 and would tick the pink/sparkly/towering boxes on many a shoe lover’s wish list.

“I’ve got a pair of these at home for my god-daughter,” says the Carlisle-born shoe designer. His god-daughter is just three and she’ll have to wait until she’s 18 to get her hands on them, but when she does, she’s got quite a treat in store.

“Every season I order her a pair of shoes [from my collection] and when she turns 18 I’m going to give her all 36 pairs.” Talk about a fairy godfather. “Her mum doesn’t get to look after them,” he adds, “because I know she’d start wearing them.”

We’re chatting in 29, the members’ club in Glasgow. Kelsey, straight off the train from London, is dressed in the classic designer’s uniform of simple neutrals. He is tired, but becomes animated when he handles the shoes, turning them over and over in his hands, running his thumb down the slim heels.

Kelsey designs shoes for women who love shoes. Or, to be more specific, for women who love heels. While his collections incorporate flats, his pieces are the kind of high, sculptural shoes that maketh the outfit, and are beloved by everyone from Kylie to Madonna, Kate Bosworth to the late Amy Winehouse.

His footwear enjoys a cult following, but since creating his first collection for Debenhams in spring 2011, his designs have become available to a whole new market.

The Barbie’s Dream Shoe he is cradling today is from his spring/summer 2012 collection for the high-street store’s Edition range. It’s a range comprising 35 pieces, including handbags – a first for Kelsey, but an interesting departure for a designer who always imagined he’d go into womenswear.

After studying at London’s Central Saint Martins, a friend put him in touch with a designer who needed some footwear to go with a collection. He whipped up some sketches for her and the shoes were manufactured by Jimmy Choo. The company went on to offer him a job, and so his foray into footwear turned into a career.

He has since designed for Mulberry and Pucci, and his namesake label is a celebrity favourite. His aim for the pieces he creates for Debenhams, he says, is to make them look just as a good as the shoes in his mainline collection, but at a sixth of the price.