Emma Hope in Hyde Park

At this year's Glastonbury festival, among the oddballs of the theatre field, a rather beautiful lady was taking pictures. She stood out among the gnarled old hippies and fire-eaters in a Marni sundress and Marc Jacobs flak jacket. Her shoes, however, were even more incongruous: leopard-print and made from ponyskin. Still, you can't expect Emma Hope, shoe designer and footwear obsessive (her first designs were doodled on schoolbooks), to let standards slip.

'You saw me? You thought I looked lovely? Oh, thank you,' says Emma. 'I was getting inspiration and taking pictures of all those wonderful people on stilts.'

She's wearing a pair of pointy stilettos for Hyde Park and is very specific about where she wants to be photographed - on the bridge over the Serpentine, which separates Hyde Park from Kensington Gardens. 'It's a brilliant meeting point as it's hard to get wrong. I used to meet my aunt and uncle just north of the bridge before the Christmas carol concert at the Albert Hall and we'd have a rather chilly picnic nearby. So I associate it with meeting people and pleasure.

'I see Hyde Park in much the same way that John Betjeman saw Peter Jones,' she continues. 'He said he felt nothing bad would happen if he was in Peter Jones - he felt protected from the outside world.' Hyde Park is also slap-bang between Emma's two shops in Sloane Square and Westbourne Grove. 'I drive through the park every day - from my flat in Chelsea to my offices in Notting Hill - and always look forward to crossing the bridge as the view looks like a bit of the countryside in the middle of London.'

Indeed, the park is a remarkably big chunk of greenery - one-and-a-half miles long and a mile wide - for such a central spot in such a big city. Emma is used to greenery, having been brought up in Sussex, Hampshire and Surrey.

Now 39 and still unattached, Emma's been running her own company since she was 21. But she remains, in her own words, a 'bit of a hippie chick'. Hence the continuing fascination with festivals. Next on the agenda is one in Cambridge where she'll be snapping away again with her old-fashioned camera. Wearing, no doubt, a pair of devor? slingbacks.