SARAH LUCAS

I had seen this self-portrait photograph of Sarah Lucas eating a banana, and I fell for her instantly. Her expression of defiant, confident intelligence and her blokeish posturing made her seem so feminine. Her English, stroppy, fuck-you wit is beguiling and charming, and when I got to meet her, we fell in.

I had the inspiration to ask her to walk in my 1998 fashion show — to my joy, she accepted. I noticed she had not come out for the finale and worried that she might have disapproved of the frivolity. Instead when I found her afterwards, she hadn’t realized there was a finale and had got changed and gone to the bar.

There is a picture of us both wearing Jolly Dogger jumpers for a magazine cover, I have a copy of it above my desk where I work. I was smoking a cigarette and I remember wanting to reach over and put it in her mouth, as though we were celebrating a tryst - but I lost my nerve.

I love Sarah's work, it is provocative and brilliant. I have travelled around the world to see it and whenever I do, I feel charged up with her anarchic spirit.