MULTI-TASKER WHO IGNORES EMAILS

GIVENCHY is Parisian couture meets Hollywood. Founder Hubert de Givenchy designed Audrey Hepburn’s little black dress in Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

Now 47-year- old Clare Waight Keller, daughter of a legal secretary and an engineer, has taken over. Low-key and charming, Waight Keller joined Calvin Klein on the strength of her graduate collection at St Martin’s, was then snapped up by Ralph Lauren before becoming creative director at Pringle and then Chloe. Having designed handbag after bestselling handbag, she’s rumoured to have left because Chloe wouldn’t agree to ‘salary increases proportionate to sales’.

At her Givenchy show last month, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore and Lily Collins all sat in the front row wearing her designs.

FAMILY MATTERS:

A mother of three — twins Charlotte and Amelia, 14, and Harrison, five — Clare is married to U.S. architect Philip Keller and lives a Eurostar chic lifestyle with a farmhouse in Cornwall and a cavernous apartment on Paris’s Bois de Boulogne.

She refuses to open emails until she’s walked her son to school, saying: ‘ He’s always in a bouncy mood, talking about the birds in the park or the diggers or things like that. It’s refreshing to have that innocent perspective in the morning and not to have to think about the day ahead.’

As for whether her job is made more difficult because of children, she says: ‘A family grounds you. When I didn’t have children, I was working all the time. Now I have to be more efficient, more resourceful, more exacting and focused.’

FASHION NOTES:

She loves surfing and owns ‘approximately’ 130 pairs of shoes.

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY:

Chloe parent brand, Richemont, said the label had ‘ good sales growth’ under Clare. Indeed, it increased every one of the seven years she was there. Givenchy will hope for the same.