State of Dress began because I could never quite find the thing I had in my head.

I kept coming across romantic dresses that made the woman inside them look rather helpless. The alternatives often had the air of an annual review. Neither was what I had in mind, although it took me a while to understand what was missing.

For years, I tried to talk myself into things. I would stand in a changing room pinching the waist or folding a sleeve out of the way, already thinking about what I wanted to change. I spent countless hours altering them, returned plenty and left an embarrassing number hanging unworn.

I have always noticed the woman in a film who is dressed slightly wrong for the occasion. She is usually the one I remember. I wanted that. Romance with some danger still in it. Something beautiful that did not make the woman wearing it look harmless.

Most women know this: the low-level static, the chronic background hum of needing to be liked. To be accommodating. To arrive dressed as a delicate child-woman and then have the decency not to unsettle anyone.

It becomes so familiar that you can mistake it for your own voice. I certainly did.

Don’t get me wrong, I like being liked as much as anyone. It was all the rearranging I objected to. I wanted to make clothes that didn’t join in.

I’m Ayesha Mirza. I started State of Dress to make those clothes.

The collections are deliberately small. Each piece is designed and made in London, one at a time, only after it has been chosen. I don’t include anything simply to make up the numbers.

What happens after that is personal. For me, it was the feeling of no longer asking a room for permission.

The rest is between you and the dress.