Mary Portas and Melanie Rickey are the Mrs and Mrs of the style world. As they launch their first designer collection, they talk women, wardrobes and wedding outfits

When I listen back to the recording of our interview, you can hear Mary Portas arriving a good 10 seconds before she bursts into the room. I have come to meet Mary and her wife Melanie Rickey, Grazia's fashion editor at large, to talk about Mary's latest venture, a clothes store aimed at stylish fortysomething women, which she has launched with House of Fraser and the creation of which is the subject of her latest TV show, Mary Queen Of Frocks. Mary is running late, so on the tape you can hear Melanie and I chit-chatting about obscure French knitwear labels and nibbling the cookies she has brought along and cooing over Walter, Mary and Melanie's schnoodle (poodle-schnauzer cross – black, of course), and then suddenly in the background there is the unmistakable clack-clack-clack of someone hurrying in high heels and the noise of a door bursting open – all so exaggerated and theatrical it sounds, on the machine, like a radio play – and then Mary's booming, head-girl tones as she cuts off our conversation, shouting, "Lies! It's all lies! Don't listen to her!" while whipping off her jacket with a flourish that would shame a matador, laughing, hugging me, kissing Melanie and, basically, taking over.

It's a very Mary Portas entrance. She has a natural mix of authority, showmanship and a certain very British, mischievous sense of humour which makes her good telly. She is dressed, as always, in sharp tailoring (perfect black trousers) made modern with softer pieces (a featherweight, scoop-neck pocket T-shirt) and dramatic jewellery (silver bracelet and necklace of the scale and weight favoured by hip-hop moguls and Tudor kings). And then there is that extraordinary hair, a bob that glows like a Christmas tangerine.

Having found national fame as the Queen Of Shops, helping and goading and persuading failing shopkeepers into turning their businesses around by listening to what their customers want, Portas has turned the tables on herself. Mary, her eponymous new project, aims to fill what she sees as a glaring gap in the market, providing stylish clothes at middling prices (£100-£200 for a dress) for women who are being ignored by the youth-focused high street.

Her mission goes beyond fashion. "I want grown-up women to be recognised in our culture. Why is nobody dressing them? It's ridiculous, Jess, it's just ridiculous. There are all these fabulous, sexy, innovative, brilliant women out there, in their late 30s and their 40s. Why is nobody dressing them? Because you know what, it matters. Anyone who says 'it's just clothes' – well, they clearly have no comprehension of how having the right clothes can make women feel better about themselves, better equipped for their lives. Clothes are so powerful."

The store is called Mary, but Melanie has helped shape it from the beginning, bringing a fashion edge to Mary's retail crusade. The couple met eight years ago, at a Royal College of Art end-of-year dinner. Mary was in her early 40s, a mother of two young children, recently separated after 13 years of marriage from her husband Graham, a chemical engineer, and running her own PR agency. "Mel was wearing a fabulous green Dries Van Noten," reminisces Mary fondly; they fell in love, and married last year, a few days after Mary's 50th birthday. As a married couple who are both players on the British fashion scene, are they a power couple? They both look aghast at me, and then look at each other and laugh. "No. What does that even mean? We're just a couple," Melanie says. "Look, we've never done an interview together before," says Mary, "because, yes, it's a single-sex relationship, and there are sensitivities around that. And I don't want it to be a big deal. But I wanted to do an interview together now, because Mel's influence on the collection has been so great and I want her to get credit for it. She's the one whose opinion really matters to me. When it comes to signing off on a design, the most important question for me is – has she seen it?"

My goodness, Mary can talk. Sometimes it feels like being locked in to Mary FM. The only time she is quiet is when Mel speaks. The commanding hand gestures quieten and she goes still, often looking intently at the table or at her hands, a picture of rapt attention. How would Mary, the collection, have been different if Mel hadn't been involved? "It goes further back than that. Melanie has had a huge impact on how I dress. Early on in our relationship, we went shopping in Harvey Nicks. Boho was in – all those big puffy sleeves, and it all looked beyond dreadful on me, I was dying in the changing room, so we left and went home and Mel edited my wardrobe. She was brilliant. Essentially, she created the signature look I've had ever since." In that look was the germ of an idea, for a collection that would rescue other Marys out there from changing-room hell. When it came to pinning down the concept for the range, they sat down "and tried to figure out: what makes the perfect outfit?" says Mel. The result is the Pret a Portas cocktail (the fingerprints of Mel's Grazia background are all over the communication of the brand) which goes: one part simple chic, one part edge, then decorate. "That's how Kate Moss does it," says Melanie. "That's how I do it," adds Mary.

Whose fault is it, I ask, that the fashion industry ignores older women? Mary pulls no punches: "It starts on the catwalk. Designers put these androgynous-looking young girls up there, simply because they look amazing in clothes. Fine. But that message gets promulgated by the media. And then the retailers come along and – look, most retailers are not visionaries. They follow what they see being promoted. So it has become one of the codes of fashion, that age is not sexy."

Barbara Hulanicki founded Biba because women were fed up of dressing like their mothers. Forty years later, we have the opposite problem, says Mary – we are being sold clothes that are more appropriate for our daughters. Not dressing like a teenager means editing your trends. ("For this season," Mel says, "we discounted the 60s, because that's a youth look, and we discounted all the silly trends like, you know, Navajo.") It also means intelligent dressing for your proportions: "Not that Gok Wan thing where you just shove a belt on everyone, but drawing attention to your better parts – wear a three-quarter-length sleeve rather than a long one, scoop the neckline lower, and then you can discreetly hide your least favourite parts." One of Mel's ideas is the Armery, sleeves you buy separately to wear under short-sleeved tops if you don't want to show your arms. "And one of my rules for what made it into the collection was: you need to be able to look at it on its own, and for a long time," says Mel. "Don't buy crap," as Mary puts it. Antonio Berardi stepped in to advise on cut.

Service and the shopping experience is a key part of the new project. "You need to create a space where people want to be," says Mary. "That's what I did at Harvey Nichols [where she worked in the 90s]. It's as simple as that. That's what happens when you walk into a great restaurant. It's the buzz, the atmosphere, being looked after." She sees the demise of service as a key factor in the demise of the high street, "because it allowed the internet to take over. Retailers neglected the shopping experience to the point where you'd rather sit at your computer."

Do they talk about clothes at home? "Of course! Especially Melanie. She's obsessed!" says Mary.

"I am not. That makes me sound ridiculous," says Melanie.

"You are! Obsessed!"

"It's my profession and it's what I strive to be good at, but I'm not some obsessed crazy person."

Do they share a wardrobe? "Wardrobe? Jess, darling, come on! Wardrobes! Plural! But yes, we share," says Mary. I am curious about what happens when one asks the other, "How do I look?" because being asked this question as a lover and as a fashion expert are two very different scenarios. "Funnily enough," says Mary, "it doesn't really come up. We're both pretty confident in our looks." But when they decided to get married, "finding the clothes became my project," says Melanie. "We are both feminine and we both wanted to look fabulous but we didn't want to look like bride and bride." In the end, Berardi came to their rescue, designing co-ordinating outfits: a skirt suit for Mary, a dress for Melanie.

Mary has her flaws. She is a terrible fashion snob, talking about people wearing "hideous cheap nasty rubbish" and "dresses above the knee, with big fat legs – I mean, awful." Melanie starts telling a story about when her mum came into the shop, and how much she liked the clothes, and Mary huffs and leans back and crosses her arms until Melanie breaks off and looks at her, and Mary says, "Well I'm sorry, but I just hate the Mum stories. What gets me is that the minute you start saying you are dressing 40-year-olds you get the 60- and 70-year-olds coming in saying, where's my stuff? If I was doing a range for teenagers, I wouldn't expect to have thirtysomethings coming in and saying, there's nothing for me. But I get these old biddies coming in and saying [adopts faltering Old Biddy voice], 'Ooh, I won't be coming back' and I'm, like, good riddance!"

The story of Mary's early life is astonishing. When she was 16, the fourth of five children, her mother died suddenly of meningitis. "Well, basically, a year later my father remarries, this hideous woman, and moves in with her and leaves us behind [Mary and Lawrence, two years younger], so I was looking after my brother. It was actually quite a laugh, in a way, that time, although it seems crazy now. But nine months later my father died, leaving everything to her, and she sold the house from under us, and my brother and I were homeless." That Mary kept her life, and her younger brother's, on track in these circumstances tells you something about her character. The best bit of the story comes when, a decade and a half later, Mary bumps into her stepmother in the food hall of Marks & Spencer at Marble Arch. (It is a rather marvellous touch that this moment of high drama in the life of a retail guru should take place in one of our capital's landmark shops.)

Mary was with her baby daughter, and she saw her stepmother across the store. She went over and said hello, and her stepmother asked how she was, and she said to her, "I'm good, I'm really good. This is my daughter, Verity, and my son is outside with my husband, Graham, and life is wonderful." And then she turned and left and went outside to Graham, leaving the shopping basket behind, and only once safely outside did she burst into tears. Her determination not to be the victim is what makes this story so moving.

Melanie moved in with Mary and her children, Mylo and Verity, six years ago. I wonder whether Mary had misgivings about introducing a stepmother to the family home, given her experience? "Gosh. There's a parallel to draw! Oh God, no. I mean... I've never thought of it like that. Do you know, that never occurred to me. The kids adored Melanie from the start. They are just the most wonderful, brilliant, phenomenal children." Have they found their mother being in a single-sex relationship difficult? "The thing is, all children want is for things to be normal. And you have to respect that. But you can't compromise your life, because when you are happy and joyful, your children benefit from that. We deal with things by being honest and loving, just like any parents. When Mylo went to a new school at 11, when he wanted to have a new friend over, I would ring up the parents and say, do you mind letting George or Harry or whoever know that my partner is a woman? So that Mylo didn't have to be explaining that. And all the children Mylo chose as friends were lovely people, and it was, you know, out in the open, and dealt with, which is the best way, don't you think?"

It is a feelgood experience, spending time with these two. Their positivity is infectious. "We need the clothes that do justice to our lives, you know?" Mary says. "Because the women out there are amazing." The psychology of clothes is complex; we need clothes that flatter our sense of who we are, as well as our bottoms. These two get that. "I looked at the wardrobes of people like Carine Roitfeld," says Melanie, "women whose look our customer probably doesn't think she can emulate, not without designer budgets. But of course she can. We all can." She's right, I go away thinking. Of course we can.

{loadposition user38} source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/2011/oct/07/mary-portas-melanie-rickey-fashion-power-couple-intervierw

source: http://www.europerank.com/lifestyle/lifestyle/57135-mrs-mrs