Melanie Ward: I just drifted into fashion in a weird way; it is almost strange to think that what I’ve done has had an influence on people. I was always passionate about clothes; I was always making things, sewing and customising vintage pieces. I went to university in London and I did a degree in languages and politics – and I was constantly making clothes when I was there. It was a twin life, like Sartre meets Portobello Market! I thought I was going to change the world. I thought I’d be a diplomat. And really it turned out you have to be a diplomat in fashion. We were all going out all of the time and somebody came up to me at a party, I was wearing a man’s jacket that I had customised, I had made it into this mini dress. This person asked me where I had bought it and I told them, then they just asked me to do some styl- ing for them. I did not really know what styling was so I took things from my closet and my mum’s closet – she always had so many incredible clothes – and I turned up with them. I was paid such a ton of money for this day of styling, it was a hair or beauty job – well it felt like a ton of money for me then – I thought, this is easy! When I graduated from university, I was doing all sorts of disparate things. I was writing in French, I was showroom modelling, I was trying to pay my way through Saint Martin’s – I attended a fashion course for a year.

It all happened very quickly. I met Dave and Corrine in 1989, and that was when my first story was published in The Face. It was a ‘suburban space’ story with Nigel Shafran. Nigel and I used to work from where he lived in Golders Green. I used to drive round in my Triumph Herald, and we’d go to shopping centres and ask people to wear things. So I’d get some leopard coat from a big fashion house and ask a little old lady to wear it with her own clothes. We were always doing these projects. I loved that side of dressing people up and documenting things…

Completely. It was always human, but an extravagant version of reality. Nigel has just brought out our Teenage Precinct Shoppers shoot as a little book. That shoot always obsessed Raf Simons. Nigel’s a genius and a nightmare! He never really wanted to do fashion – and never did really. He’s a giant talent.

Yes, it’s impossible to choose between them and what they do and what they did. There’s also Dave, Glen, Corrine, Mario… I was discussing this with Mario Sorrenti not long ago. I think I was there when Mario met Kate; we are all like brothers and sisters. We all used to live in London together. We still all see each other all of the time.

I think we are all incredibly grounded and normal, it isn’t blockbuster in the slightest! I suppose people assume various things about us as a group, but information isn’t really knowledge. We have this whole history together, like a family. It was an idea of defining a world for me with all of them.

Mario Sorrenti once said to me, ‘Everyone thinks you’re a minimalist.’ We got in to a bit of a fight about it – he’s like my brother. I said, ‘I’m not a minimalist. I’ve never been a minimalist!’ I think I am more a modernist; I try and look forward. I don’t want to be limited too much by the past. I have been told my work is seductive, and that resonates with me. My main aim in life is always to go forward, so it is very hard for me to go back. That’s why doing a project like this is quite unusual, to look back at my old clothes. But it is always interesting to try and define a world. There is this weird, girly part of me that loves long gowns, but I think it is how you wear them that counts, you have to wear them with some irreverence. Then this other part of me loves menswear, because it is more about style rather than fashion, it’s more timeless. I suppose it is the attitude with which you wear clothes that matters most to me.

I used to hang out in John Lewis’ schoolboy department. I used to buy little grey suits because that’s what fit- ted me and I liked the boyish proportions. I then used to shoot them on Rose or Kate or on Emma Balfour if I was with Dave. And, of course, there were all the amazing boys we shot too. I used to have to wait to make sure no 13-year-old schoolboys were around; I’d quickly have to duck into the changing rooms and try things on. Then there were the sex shops. After grunge, Dave and I particularly moved into this other territory, he was really experimental with his light, and I was going a lot to sex shops to find clothes. In sex shops there would always be these great PVC pants, there would be these amazing rubber straps where you could make a belt or a top by wrapping them round. It wasn’t so much a bondage thing; it was just some different cool styling thing. Or there would be the idea of putting some ridiculous thing on a guy, like a pair of Speedos with a lace top and then Dave would photograph that. I think I almost went straight from John Lewis to the sex shops! I remember trailing round sex shops in Pigalle in Paris, and I tell you, I saw some sights. I was always on a crazy hunt in some weird or banal place just for something to photograph.

For me it always is this effortless thing, the concept of an effortless way of dressing. Your clothes don’t wear you; they should never scream fashion too loud. That’s what I find really modern. When we started the grunge movement – as it’s called – I wanted for the kids to look a certain way… I say kids although we were all similar ages, it was dressing up people, but these are things we were also dressing in ourselves. It was easy; it was like putting on your clothes and going out. And that is still really my approach now. I suppose this has become the norm now.

I suppose what we were doing was weirdly voyeuristic, particularly for Dave and me. We were staging it clearly, but there was a sense of voyeurism. And I suppose that was true of the work I did with Corrine too, although there we had the beautiful Kate. Kate’s beauty was more tangible I suppose. She is the most beautiful creature ever and the most amazing model and actress ever. Maybe she wasn’t the height of an Amazon and had slightly imperfect teeth, she also had this incredible personality as well as that beauty.

We really were living this life. I was talking about this with Glen Luchford recently. We were all at this party together, and he was documenting it. Glen was really mixing drinks and it all got very bad, to the point where all three of us needed to vomit at the same time. I had been going a lot to see John Galliano with Kate and hanging out with him, and I remember all three of us had these maxi skirts from John. We all literally jumped up at the same time, tripped up over each other’s maxi skirts and ran to the bathroom. One of us threw up in the toilet, one in the sink and one through the open window. We were like these three little peas in a pod. Kate is like my little sister, she always was, and she always will be.

It was a real lifestyle; there was a sense of something happening that was authentic in those photographs.

I say the word authentic over and over again. When somebody is not trying to play at being who he or she is, it is authentic. Being true to yourself is what matters. Being true to yourself, being comfortable in your own skin is important. I was discussing the idea of ego with somebody and they’d decided having some ego is important because you know who you are, can protect yourself with it and draw boundaries. But sometimes – and I know I always try and see the good side of things and that is annoying for people, like I’ll always see a murder from a murderers point of view as well! – I just feel that if you are true to yourself and control your ego things are different. There are a lot of egos in this business, and if that ego is coming from a place of insecurity, it is almost like a false pride.

I had absolutely no interest in America at first. It was not a place that appealed to me at all. I have never been a great planner, I just always go with my gut, always have, always will. Decisions I make come from an emotional place. I feel that things always just come into my life, and that is true of all the people I started out with. We were not following this dream to become successful, or wealthy or move to America, to buy an apartment or just buy things. We were just having the best time expressing ourselves and doing what we felt. We were essentially writing our own rules and functioning outside of the fashion industry. We were not accepted by the industry, apart from Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, or Ronnie Cooke, as she was known then, before she married Jonathan. Ronnie discovered us very early on, and she told Calvin Klein about us. But it was a time when we were kids experimenting. We were completely out of the system, working with bands – because nobody in the fashion industry wanted to touch us – and we weren’t doing it to revolt, we were just having fun. We were playing and expressing ourselves and having the best fun ever. Now, maybe, people think that you can only change things from within the system. The advent of bloggers was different, and now that has become big business too.

That’s the difference. We didn’t want a way into the system. All we wanted to do was go to the beach and take pictures! It was such a different time. I suppose people now enter into all of this wanting it to be their career.

Meeting Liz Tilberis, who was editing Harper’s Bazaar at the time felt right, again it was a gut decision. She had been the bad girl at British Vogue and she really wanted me to be the bad girl at Bazaar. I suppose I am so quintessentially British, European I guess. I definitely am a European living in America. I hate to generalise, it’s sort of crass, but I feel there are certain areas where people embrace newness in America. There is openness to newness; it is embraced with enthusiasm. As Brits we might go into things a little deeper at times, but there is also more cynicism. We’re more guarded.

When I first started at Harper’s Bazaar, some designers would literally put on a second show for us with models in the looks. That is the power of one of those big, American publications. I remember gripping the table, about to fall over in my heels. I’d be so tired. It’s like an assault course going to the shows. I remember I was in Italy once, about on my way to a Nicolas Ghesquière show for Callaghan I think. It was at a time when Italy was full of squat toilets, and I desperately needed to pee. I remember I was wearing a pair of red Yves Saint Laurent heels and red socks. I went to one of these toilets, and I remember I managed to pee on my socks – I was sat in the front row with pee all over my socks! It was so absurd.

Helmut used to call me the nicest pit bull he ever met. If I feel something I can’t let it go! I have not seen him for years now. We have very different lives. But I definitely think it was a prolific time. It was a definite moment.

I like all of it. I wouldn’t just want to do one or the other. I like working on images and with designers, making clothes, the whole lot. I thrive more by doing more than one thing. Brand building interests me; it is pivotal at the moment. Again, it is brands essentially knowing what they are and knowing how to define that. I want to work on more of that.

In those days, what was going on editorially was inspiring designers in their work. I might have been making a weird pair of sleeping-bag shorts for Emma Balfour to wear or some sort of denim cloak to be photographed by Dave. But nowadays, as a stylist or an editor, it is far more limiting. Sometimes you are just deciding if it is a side parting or a centre parting. With the nature of advertising, people are not necessarily looking for a point of view from the stylist; they are looking for you to shoot look number 17. Saying that, I don’t know whether I am nostalgic for the past, I don’t necessarily want it to repeat. I’ve been there and done it, and I want to do something new now. I am still insatiably curious and I love to challenge myself.