Wayne Hemingway: And for my next trick...

Wayne Hemingway built up Red or Dead from a market stall and made a fortune. But, he tells Katy Guest, it's ideas, not money that motivates him. So now he's designing homes for Wimpey

Wayne Hemingway is not your typical fashion designer. He doesn't have an expensive designer stitch on him. He can think of few things more boring than hanging out at celebrity parties. And he's skipped breakfast because he knows there will be a table full of fruit where he is going, and nothing tastes better than free food. In fact, when we meet – at the Institute of Directors' trendy new business centre in Pall Mall in London, the IoD at 123 – he is behaving less like a member of the glitterati and more like somebody's mum. "I do wish they wouldn't drag the sofa across the carpet like that," he whispers to his wife and business partner Gerardine. "They're going to ruin that carpet."

To be fair, he did design the carpet. And the sofas, and almost all the interior of the IoD, when the institute invited him and Gerardine to undertake a complete refit of the building to make it more relevant to its younger members. The request came after Wayne was turned away from the building for not wearing a tie, and as a result it is now the boxy armchairs in the institute's conference room that wear the chalk-stripes, not the businessmen who sit in them.

We're there for the launch of the Hemingways' latest venture, a collaboration with Wimpey Homes on a 688-home development on a brownfield site on the banks of the Tyne near Gateshead. Not unusually, this project also came out of Wayne's outspokenness. He had been "ranting", he says, about the "Wimpey-fication" of Britain, and was called in to have words. "I thought I was in trouble," he says. "But they said, 'There may be some truth in what you're saying. Let's take it further.' And it developed from there."

The result is an affordable, environmentally-friendly development with green spaces, transport links and traffic restrictions that make it ideal for family living. As the father of four young children himself, Wayne says you can't help but let them have an input.

"From a very early age kids have opinions and know how they want to live. They don't just become 16 or 18 and suddenly get a mind of their own. The other day we were talking about carpeting the place and our four-year-old heard it and said, 'I don't want carpet because my cars won't go fast on it.' You forget about things like that. So we haven't got carpet in that room, because to him the most exciting thing is zooming his car about the living-room floor. If that's what he enjoys and if that's what gives him peace of mind, then that's more important than carpet, isn't it?"

This openness to ideas has made Hemingway a huge success. From being, he says, "poor – and I don't mean middle class, I mean poor," he and Gerardine built up Red or Dead from a market stall in Camden to a company that made them millions when they sold it in 1995. "The story with me and Gerardine is, we were childhood sweethearts, we met in a disco in Burnley. When punk happened I thought it was the first fashion everyone could get into. Then, coming down to London on British Rail for the weekend and going to Vivienne Westwood, we found it was £60 or £70 for a T-shirt. That wasn't us.

"I've got a letter that proves we weren't allowed at first to be on the schedule at London Fashion Week because our prices were too low. There was no mention of our not being good enough designers. That spurred me on. If one thing made me successful it was being told we couldn't be part of it. I hate elitism, I absolutely effing hate it. That was like a red rag to a bull to me. And we did it, we got on the catwalk, we won awards three years in a row, we sold to Topshop, we sold to Miss Selfridge, and we became almost a household name in the end."

This philosophy has dictated all Hemingway's projects, and he has turned down commissions that would have made him rich because they were too exclusive. "You see a plain white sheet in Debenhams with a designer name on it. I mean, what the hell is that about? This is different because we're not putting our name on it. You see Bruce Oldfield now in the back of glossy magazines advertising Oldfield-designed riverside apartments, and it's done purely on the celebrity status. Walking around Newcastle you see Conran-designed loft apartments. And you know Terence Conran himself hasn't designed them, he's got a big team of designers who might have done it. This isn't like that. These houses aren't going to have our little signature on them saying 'Hemingway'. It's got to stand up on its own because we don't need cheesy licensing deals. If we needed the money we might have taken a completely different approach to it. I think this is purely down to the fact that we can be principled because we're rich."

Hemingway is quite blunt about money. He knows he's wealthy because he knows what it's like not to be. "I value money," he says. "I value it because of not having it." But he knows where to stop. "What would we do with more money?" he asks, with a straight face. "We tried buying a boat but we didn't like sailing, it was frightening. I'm scared enough that my kids lead such privileged lives. We take them to Australia, we've taken them to Mexico. I only went abroad once before I was 18. We might see a sofa we love from Cappellini or something but we couldn't buy it. The idea of spending £4,000-£5,000 pounds on a sofa? We can't do it.

"The money's tucked away and I think the only way we'd be persuaded to spend it is if the kids had a really great business idea in the future. Not ripping off people but a really nice, social business idea, I think we'd invest in that. It's a fantastic thing having money. People say money can't buy you love and money can't make you happy, well it can. It gives you security, it gives you peace of mind, it gives you space, it gives you time. But if you start spending it and living the life of money – the spending it and the trying to keep up with other people who've got money is where it can hurt. We've got all those millions in the bank, why should we need more?"

Apart from his collection of kitsch art, his family is the one thing that gets Hemingway really animated. "At Red or Dead we had 120 people, so it became a bit impersonal in the end because you can't help that," he explains. "When we started Hemingway Design we decided it would just be us two. I would love it – and I very much doubt it will happen, this utopia – if our kids all went off and developed skills that complimented ours. I don't mind if they don't, or if they're like us and decide not to learn anything. But if we could work together as a family like the Jacksons, like a friendly Jacksons, one that didn't break up, it would be fantastic." He leans forward in his seat, grinning, and you can see the images scrolling through his mind like a cartoon strip. "We could be the Hemingway Six. It would be brilliant having a family business like that. A bit of a long shot, but you never know."

Hemingway laughs when I ask him if he has a business plan. He's worked "bloody hard" to get where he is now but he's had some lucky breaks too, he reckons. "Someone equally as talented as us could have made one wrong decision and not been able to do what we've done," he says. Hemingway is a man who truly appreciates the advantages he has earned for himself, and above all, he says, he is content. "It's hard to imagine it getting better," he says. "But it does tend to."

He's confident about the future, and sure that the next big thing will come along when it's ready. Although he's remaining typically open-minded about what it might be. "It's got to be affordable, it's got to make a difference, and it's got to make us smile," he says. "I've always dreamt about designing a car. I'd like to do one that would have loads of glass and nothing stopping your vision. That drives me mad. There's got to be some kind of material that gives you the structure of a car but gives you unimpaired vision for 360 degrees." If there is, you can be sure Hemingway will find it.

So what is next for the world's most unlikely style guru? "I love doing things where people in volume can buy the product you've been involved in," he says. "Anything that counts and gets people buying things, that doesn't rip them off and that gives them something that they cherish. It could be anything, couldn't it? It could be absolutely anything at all."