There aren’t many designers who can say their clothes have been worn by celebrities as diverse as Claudia Winkleman, Jennifer Hudson and Mary Earps. It just goes to show how wide-reaching the appeal of British-Lebanese designer Nadine Merabi is. If you love a ‘going out-out’ ensemble and the brand wasn’t already on your radar, by now it should be. Merabi’s Christmas pop-up in London was hugely popular, to the extent that it’s now open until March, and TV darling Ms Winkleman sported no fewer than four Merabi jumpsuits during the latest primetime season of Strictly Come Dancing (the season prior she rocked Merabi’s tiger-pattern sequin suit – exactly as spectacular as it sounds).

Merabi is, of course, thrilled by this primetime exposure but to her it’s nothing new, having seen thousands of women, including Maya Jama, Davina McCall, and Ladies Eliza and Amelia Spencer, sporting her jumpsuits in the eight years since she co-founded her brand with Blue Wilson.

“I designed our best-selling jumpsuit six years ago; it’s a timeless shape and a timeless design, and it still makes people feel great when they’re wearing it,” she says. “It takes us a lot longer to create a jumpsuit than it does a dress because we have to spend so much time getting the fit right. That’s where we stand out. I’ll ask [my team] to take a millimetre off something. They’re like, a millimetre, what’s the point? But there is a point!”

It’s not just this attention to detail, and her glamorous, glitzy, figure-hugging jumpsuits, that Nadine Merabi is known and loved for. Best-sellers also include satin pyjamas with feather detailing, short sparkly dresses and statement blazers (I see a video of Merabi wearing the Kira and I’m immediately won over). “Tailoring is coming into its own now,” says Merabi. “Our suits and tailoring do well because they’re so empowering; it’s liberating as a woman to wear a suit. Especially for your wedding; you can still have your big day with your big fairy-tale dress, if you want, but it’s also really cool and a bit different to wear a suit for part of it as well.”

Friendly, chatty, open and savvy (in the best kind of way), Mancunian Merabi is a delight to interview, possibly because it sounds like she’s living the dream. She launched her luxury, ready-to-wear label after ten years as a professional hockey player and is now selling the kind of clothes she herself wanted to wear and couldn’t find. She is her customer and that’s undoubtedly part of the reason for her success. Another is the quality and intentionally accessible pricing. It’s all designed, Merabi confirms, to be timeless, and intended to be cherished and forever-loved. “At Merabi, we believe that slow is not only chic but essential.”

So there are drops of new collections throughout the year but the Merabi team expects their customers to wear and enjoy their items for years to come. When we speak, Pre-Spring ’24 has just launched – Retelling the Romantic Narrative – and features plenty of the black, white and gold we’ve come to expect from Merabi, as well as fresh colours and prints. “We’re great at sparkle and partywear,” says Merabi, “but we’re leading into spring with red, which is a big colour for us this year, adding newness into the collection, and testing new shapes. There’s a lot of depth to the fabric, and the statement pieces are of course still there, but just a bit subtler with more of a summer vibe.”

But, while Merabi may claim otherwise, her clothes are not – in any real sense of the word – subtle. They’re loud and proud and unashamedly glam, emphatically making the point that, although we all love to WFH in loungewear, you can have too much of a good thing. “I do put on comfy stuff when I get home but I also enjoy getting dressed up for work. The pandemic wasn’t great for the business in the sense that we specialise in occasionwear and, all of a sudden, every occasion in the world was cancelled,” concedes Merabi. “But after a while people got fed up of wearing loungewear and they wanted to get dressed up; before the pandemic, who would have ever thought of wearing pyjamas and heels in the house, never mind going out in them?! People were done with loungewear; it was affecting their confidence.”

Empowering women to feel their best is clearly important to Merabi, and she agrees that people now understand and accept – as, of course, should always have been the case – that women can be into fitness and wearing sequins. “I really struggled with being a sportswoman and people looking at me in a certain way when I was younger. I look back now and know I shouldn’t have let it bother me, but it did.”

Merabi and I were both born in the ’80s and when we were in our early teens, girl bands reigned supreme: ‘Posh’ and ‘Sporty’ were at opposite ends of the glam scale and never the two should meet; Destiny’s Child dressed up and All Saints dressed down. “People get now that you can have your sporting life but also that it makes you feel great to get dressed up.” Today, Merabi plays padel rather than hockey, and is delighted that sportswomen at the top of their game wear her designs; Lioness Merabi fans include Mary Earps, Ella Toone and Millie Bright.

You can still visit the Merabi pop-up until 24 March and she’s thrilled to give Londoners the chance to try on her showstoppers in person. “We wanted to do this in London because we spend so much time, effort and energy working on custom-made fabrics, getting the fits perfect, even making sure the inside of the dresses are as beautiful as the outside,” she explains. “It’s just so lovely for people to come and try a few things on and understand how much love and care goes into each style.”

Nadine Merabi pop-up, 42 South Molton Street; nadinemerabi.com.

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