A rail stands in the corner of Ashish Gupta’s studio, sagging under the weight of thousands upon thousands of sequins. Ten years worth of the designer’s work hangs on it – there's the SS09 playing card dress and the AW07 silver floor length gown, neat reminders of a decade of  the designer’s playful wit. And how sticking two fingers up to all those who thought he was just a one-trick-sparkly pony has paid off.

Ashish is in a contemplative mood as he reflects on his decade in fashion. He’s sifting through mountains of clothes in his archive, picking out the pieces that have become signatures and rediscovering lost favourites. “When I first began, sequins were considered a bit ‘ew gross’” he says, holding up a dress with a giant Statue of Liberty stitched into the front (a SS10 number). Today, his name can’t be mentioned without picturing a mass of rainbow coloured clothes. The sequin has come to define the designer and set him apart. Sticking to his signature has allowed Ashish to run his label successfully, without being caught up in trends or heralded by the fashion press before being quickly forgotten.

In the summer of 2001, he began making capsule collections after graduating. He’d just completed a masters at Central Saint Martins and was tentatively dipping a toe into the murky waters of starting a label. He was one of the first recipients of Topshop's NewGen programme, who helped launch his catwalk shows and provided sponsorship for three years in a row.

Over the decade he’s taken everyday items and added his particular layer of sheen - remember the hi-vis workman jackets and the Coca Cola bag? He has always creatively cast, been hounded by Daily Mail commentators when Miley Cyrus was pictured wearing his half jeans, half jogging bottom trousers. “Somebody had written something like this person should be burnt at the stake!" But his customers, from teenagers, millennials and pop-culture vultures - they got it.

He rarely gives interviews in person as he says, “you end up being really PC because you edit loads of shit out. But this is like fashion Tourette's!" But Naomi Bikis managed to sit down with the man himself and found, aside from being the undisputed master of sequins, he also has a talent for storytelling.

Here Ashish shares, 10 pivotal tales from his 10 year career.

On the worst start to his career...
I'd finished at Saint Martins and I was going to Paris for a job interview. I got to the Gare du Nord and some idiot picked up my portfolio. I was making a phone call and I'd just put my portfolio down for a minute and it was gone, so obviously I was like oh my god, it had all my cash in it and my cards, my identity, everything is in my bag. Louise Wilson at Saint Martins had to ring up the British Embassy because I didn't have any identity on me, they had to verify that I was who I said I was. It was hideous, it was so stressful. Then I came back to London and made a very small collection, and then went to see Nadine Sanders at Tank magazine. I was terrified but she loved it and bought two of the pieces. She was wearing it one day, went into Browns, and Yeda Yun who was the buyer at Browns, saw it and rang me up and said can you come and show your collection, I love it. 

On his first ever show...
I was doing just small capsule collections for the first four years, then in the end of 2004 Yeda Yun was like right you need to start doing shows now. And then I got the Newgen sponsorship, so I think the first season I did a proper show was Spring/Summer 2005. That was the first proper full on runway show I did. It was really sickenly exciting the first time.

On sticking to his signature, despite contrary advice...
When I first started, the sequins were quite full on for a lot of people. A people expect you to move on from that and I didn't want to do that, I wanted to actually concentrate on them. I was really inspired by people like Bob Mackie, who built a whole empire from an evening gown, and he was dressing all the pop stars. Over the years even buyers and press have said to me, "oh when're you going to move on, are you going to keep doing it?" Funnily it's done a full U-turn now and people are like 'oh we're so glad you didn't move away from it because it's amazing'.

Sequins were really associated with cocktail dresses and it was all a bit Alexis Carrington (I love Alexis Carrington), but it was slightly dodgy. I was quite obsessed with it, I was like I think this is fucking cool I'm going to take it out of context, I'm going to move it into sportswear and daywear, and I want it to be like you can throw it on like you'd throw on a pair of jeans or whatever. And also coming out of the '90s, there had been all that minimalism and heroin chic, it just felt like I wanted to do something that wasn't that aggressive, and something that brought back the fun a bit more, that wasn't so serious.  

On arriving in London, fresh from Delhi for the first time…
I'd been living with my mum and dad. I'd gone to this Irish all boys Catholic school, it was really weird. It was run by the Catholic brothers so you can imagine what that was like. We used to get caned. Design was really an escape from that. India really opened up to international trade in the '90s, up until then everything was state controlled, television was state controlled, you got one TV channel and everything was controlled. Anything western was a bit of a treat. My mum used to get copies of smuggled Vogue in the house because she was obsessed with fashion, and I used to love reading them on the sly when I was supposed to be doing my homework.

On rediscovering his archive...
It's been amazing going back into the archive and pulling things up, because there's stuff that I'd completely forgotten existed, and there's also stuff that's missing which now I'm really fucking upset about because I'm like oh my god where is that piece, who's nicked it! Because some things can't really be made again, so I'm a bit upset about that.

On a stand-out moment in the past 10 years...
Going to Madonna concert and seeing her in a jacket that I had made her, that was quite epic because I'd been so obsessed with Madonna growing up. That was a heart stopping moment standing in the crowd at her show and seeing that.

On changing over the past 10 years...
I think I've become more confident about what I do. The first few years I was a bit like oh god, there were those moments where you thought am I going to survive another season, am I going to make enough money, are people going to buy it. Now I'm a little more confident because I understand how it works more and commercially I worry about it less now, because there's a customer base, there are people who love it, and I know what I'm doing. 

On keeping fashion special, not mass produced...
One of the things I've always battled against is the industrialisation, the mass manufacturing, where you send something off to a factory in China and you get back 500 of it all beautifully perfectly made. I find that a little bit boring for myself. My whole philosophy was that I wanted to do everything by hand and the mistakes would be the beauty of it and every piece would be exquisitely perfect in its own way, and it would be one of a kind even though there were ten of those dresses. Also I always think there's something quite romantic about the fact that you get 15 grown men sitting working on this beautiful exquisite little dress, that some woman halfway across the world is going to wear and they're never going to see her and they've been working on this dress. There's something quite romantic about it. People don't realise the handwork that goes into it. It takes weeks. There's a whole process of it, it's not a cut and sew thing, there's a whole different process that goes into it.

On how one sequined piece is made...
The factory in India have to bead everything before it's cut and sewn. So they have to lay the fabric out on big wooden frames, they have to chase all the patterns off, then it's beaded, once it's beaded it's taken off, and it's washed and shrunk to go back to it's original size. After which it's cut and sewn and all the seams have to be filled in by hand. So it's quite a couture process actually of working. But I think as an extension of that, I feel like what I do is that energy of London, really creative, doing one off, doing special things, and it's a little bit not being super slick.

On the nay-sayers...
I think someone said that the sequin was a silent rebellion. I used to get really offended, you wouldn't go up to someone who was doing digital print and say oh god stop doing digital print? People have based a career on that. You wouldn't go to like Burberry and say oh god are you still doing bloody trench coats? It's ridiculous. I thought no actually, I'm not going to change it because I'm making a living. Maybe you find it boring but I don't and my clients don't find it boring. I can't keep up with the demand for it - I'm saying no to re-orders a lot of the time because we can't make more, we can only make about 1500, 2000 pieces every season and that's it, we close our books after that. We physically can't create anything after that because they're not popping out of a machine. I really respect that craftsmanship and I don't want to compromise it. I love doing other things now, we do a lot of denim now, we do a lot of sweat, but that's like the bread and butter I feel.

Advice for his 10 year younger self...
Don't do it!