I'll just be honest with you, I've been a Yasmin Sewell fangirl for a long time. Her contacts and experience place her in the very small handful of international Australians making a huge impact in the fashion world. She's been the buyer at high end store Browns, London, had her own store, Yasmin Cho, and photos of her are all over the Sartorialist and Garance Doré. Now she flies around the world as a consultant to clients like Liberty.

The first thing that's clear when we finally meet up at this year’s LMFF is that she is gloriously misunderstood. Media reports paint her as employed by one fashion group at a time, such as Saba. In actual fact Sewell is far too much in demand for anything so permanent.

“The media always think I’m tied to something, like the Saba project, as though I work for someone full time. But I’m a consultant, I’m based in London." She says. "And I'm an Aquarius!" She laughs. "I can't be tied down."

Sewell has a long list of confidential clients, but she can tell me that she is working on Simon Fuller and Seojin Lee’s new fashion TV website Fashionair and is creative consultant on the board of Liberty.

The grand old store in London's west end was recently bought byrenowned apartment developers. It was feared by many that it would turn into accommodation, instead Sewell has helped guide its “renaissance”as a bastion of substantial style. I tell her Liberty is my favourite store anywhere in the world. This makes her smile.
 
“Liberty is a magical place. I have met people everywhere who say the same. You can feel the magic and the history in the place. A lot of it is down to the work and beliefs of Arthur Liberty, what he stood for and what he created.”

Her fondness for the store is obviously much more than professional. I wonder whether she could imagine a better job. “Shit!” She jokes. “Liberty is a dream job and I’ve done it. What am I going to do now?”

While the Liberty project is very much about re-inventing the past, Fashionair is all about the future. “It’s going to be like the BBC for fashion. It’s a website full of TV webisodes, interviews - everything fashion. I’m doing a sort of 'how to wear it' series where we go into peoples' wardrobes. There's just so much to it.”

All this work right smack bang in the heart of the recession which her country of residence – the UK – is seriously smarting from.

“Most people think the global financial crisis is going to be disastrous, but I actually think it will promote creativity, integrity and even happiness. I have spoken to a lot of designers who have said ‘you know what? I don’t give a stuff about making money, I’m going to go back to doing what I really love doing, what makes me happy’. That’s going to mean more creative design that is made with heart.”

LMFF has been full of creative young designers hoping to get noticed and Sewell's ever scanning eye certainly noticed a few. “TV and Arnsdorf are two labels I’ve seen that are doing things that really make sense to me, that are really relevant right now.”  Next time you're in London, you may just see them on the racks in Liberty.