Fashion designer Kate Sylvester is a keen reader: several of her past collections have had literary inspirations - from Jane Eyre to Love in a Cold Climate to Brighton Rock - and the spectacles in her range are named after favourite book characters. Her next collection was inspired in part by Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries. The appreciation is mutual: Catton was wearing a Kate Sylvester dress when she accepted her Man Booker Prize last year.
Tell us about your book collection.
I own a lot of books. I even have my favourites from childhood. I purge junk every now and again, but I hoard anything decent as I really enjoy re-reading books.
How do you organise your books?
Great tilting, wobbly towers everywhere you look. I ran out of shelf space years ago.
