Sienna, McQueen and me: She’s worked for fashion’s glitziest brands and created red carpet gowns with her film-star sister, but these days designer SAVANNAH MILLER is more excited about elasticated waists

When Savannah Miller turned six she requested her dad and mom for a pair of knitting needles. They refused – apparently, they have been too harmful for a kid – so Miller acquired some string and pencils and taught herself to knit with them as an alternative. It took her three years, however she ultimately labored it out. 

Then the artful youngster moved on to spoons; particularly, dyeing picket spoons numerous colors.

She practised tie-dye, staining and even discovered the Japanese tinting approach shibori. ‘By the point I used to be an adolescent,’ she says, ‘my mum didn’t have a single picket spoon in her home that wasn’t a unique color.’

The spoons and the knitting have been solely the beginning. When she was 14, Miller’s pal had a celebration.

‘I can not keep in mind the theme,’ she says, however she will be able to keep in mind making – and carrying – a ‘Madonna corset’, handcrafted with wire, bubble wrap and ‘cone boobs’ created from tinsel. Three years later, at her faculty leavers’ ball, she designed her personal gown. 

This time it was a Goldilocks-style frock with a pink gingham corset, puff sleeves and an infinite skirt. ‘It was a bit psychological,’ she says, ‘now that I give it some thought.’

In the present day, Miller is 44 and nonetheless designing. She has a bridalwear enterprise referred to as Savannah Miller; she ran the label Twenty8Twelve for six years along with her youthful sister, the actress Sienna, 41, and designed capsule collections with Subsequent and Debenhams.

This month she launched her personal style model, Vivere. 

The garments are largely workwear. Costs begin at £25 and go as much as £275, all the pieces is made in Turkey and items run to dimension 18. 

There are natural cotton T-shirts, good silk slip attire and heavy-looking swimsuit trousers with – Miller says excitedly – elastic waistbands. ‘Whenever you get to your 40s, elastication within the waist is an excellent factor.’

Sadly, there is no bubble-wrap and wire corset with tinsel cone boobs – however there may be the best-looking gray turtleneck I’ve seen in ages. Miller strokes the jumper. ‘Sure, I really like her.’ 

All of Miller’s creations are, it appears, anthropomorphic. ‘Oh he is nice,’ she says, holding up a stiff white shirt. ‘She’s beautiful,’ she coos, stroking a pleated skirt.

Miller studied style on the London artwork faculty Central Saint Martins. In her second 12 months, a course pal acquired her a summer season job at Alexander McQueen. The British designer was then in his 30s and had workplaces in London stuffed with style college students doing odd jobs. 

For her first week, McQueen’s staff fobbed Miller off with the quite unglamorous job of photocopying 2,000 pages of pictures for numerous moodboards. She was ‘glued’ to the photocopier for seven days straight, however she did not care. 

McQueen had chosen all the images himself – there have been portraits of punks, pictures of Ecuadorian tribes – and them was like ‘trying into his thoughts’.

Her course required her to do a piece placement, so she stayed at McQueen. After a number of months, Miller arrived on the studio to search out the designer sitting on a bench alone, gazing a wall. 

He stated, unblinking, ‘You are my new PA.’ Miller was solely 21; ‘I used to be, like, ‘F***!’ Nonetheless, she agreed and labored beneath him for the remainder of the 12 months. 

‘I discovered extra there than I did at Saint Martins,’ she says. ‘Any one among us would have lower off an arm for him. He was so extraordinary.’

When Miller left to complete her diploma, McQueen begged her to remain. She refused and ‘he by no means spoke to me once more. I assume he felt betrayed as a result of we have been like a household.’ Though Miller did go to him as soon as, months later, and says he was ‘beautiful’, the designer was additionally ‘a troubled particular person’. 

In 2010, he took his personal life. ‘I nonetheless dream about him and I think about that he is alive and it is all a joke and he is residing in LA,’ says Miller. ‘I might ramble on about him all day. It was a privilege to work there.’

On the day Miller graduated from artwork faculty she additionally came upon she was pregnant. (She now has three youngsters along with her ex-husband Nick Skinner –Moses, 17, Lyra, 14, and Bali, ten – and is married to aristocrat James Whewell.) 

However a being pregnant, or a child, did not cease her working: she did stints at Anya Hindmarch, Matthew Williamson and Betty Jackson.

In 2007, Carlos Ortega, founding father of Pepe Denims, requested if she wished to create a label along with her sibling Sienna, who was going out with Jude Legislation and ‘all the pieces she wore was being knocked off by the excessive avenue’. 

Ortega in all probability thought the pair have been going to open Sienna’s wardrobe and rapidly copy no matter was in there. The Miller sisters had different concepts for his or her label, Twenty8Twelve. 

They designed ‘Dickensian-looking’ attire; they used envelopes for garments labels, filled with secret letters to prospects; they wrote poems on washable items of paper from Japan and sewed them into again pockets of denims.

The sisters left Twenty8Twelve in 2012 when Sienna’s performing profession grew to become too massive, however they continue to be shut. In 2018, Sienna took Savannah to the Met Gala (see left); in 2022, Savannah wrote an essay for Vogue, during which she referred to as her sibling ‘a magical, golden particular person’.

Sienna helped begin her sister’s bridalwear profession, too. When Savannah acquired married in 2005, paparazzi camped in bushes to get pictures of Sienna and Jude Legislation. 

An American bridal designer, Molly Rosen Man, noticed the images of Savannah’s gown, which she’d made herself and, in 2013, requested her to collaborate. 

Miller agreed, then began her personal bridal line shortly after. Final 12 months, Carrie Johnson rented one among Miller’s attire for her wedding ceremony celebration.

Seeing somebody in one thing you made is, says Miller, ‘the most important thrill’. It is occurred to her a number of occasions. 

A stranger will stroll previous her on the street, on the airport, within the grocery store carrying a bit of clothes she created. ‘I do not converse to them,’ she says. ‘I simply smile.’

• Vivere is at viverelondon.com, johnlewis.com and chosen John Lewis shops