Lament the open disregard for one of the 20th century's greatest songwriters if you wish but it will fall on deaf ears here because all I can think about is the gorgeous 1920s-style flapper wool coat that fashion designer Stella McCartney has included in her latest collection. It's this particular piece of exquisite tailoring that she is wearing when we meet, along with a pair of impossibly trendy grey spray-on jeans complete with ankle zips.

I have been granted an audience with Stella McCartney and I am counting my lucky stars as Ms McCartney does not 'do' interviews, because (a) she refuses to discuss her private life and (b) she vehemently dislikes the media . . . something to do with a lifetime of being in the spotlight and, more recently, the repeated speculation over her relationship with the latest Mrs McCartney, Heather Mills.

It's a Monday afternoon and McCartney is launching her Spring Summer 2006 collection in the Design Rooms of Brown Thomas in Dublin. In between the silver rails and glass partition walls, willowy models float across the floor while sales assistants dressed head to toe in black offer trays of mince pies.

After close inspection of an 18-year-old model's flawless long limbs which I suspect are approximately the height of my entire body, I refuse the offer of a canape and turn my thoughts to Stella McCartney.

And there she is, not eating a canape either but whispering conspiratorially with a tall, dark-haired young man. They are both surveying the models, and without hesitation Stella's companion breaks away and adjusts the waistline of a pale orange strapless silk dress.

For this collection, McCartney collaborated with the American artist Jeff Koons, reproducing a number of his paintings on the fabric of her floor-length, silk empirewaist dresses (one of which was most recently sported by actress Thandie Newton on the red-carpet of the Brit Awards earlier this month). Dressed in these gowns the wearer appears almost celestial as they float across the floor.

It's not uncommon for fashion designers to work alongside artists; in the 1930s Elsa Schiaperelli reproduced Salvador Dali's paintings in a number of her dresses, one of which, the lobster dress, was famously worn by Wallis Simpson, wife of the abdicated king Edward Windsor.

McCartney says was encouraged to use Koons's work because of his colourful and experimental reputation as an artist.

"I really felt that this season everyone was trying to be a bit safe on the runway and a lot of the collections had been toned down, " she says. "I was just struck by Koons's use of colour and thought the boldness of the paintings would work really well."

As someone who grew up surrounded by music and art, it was not unusual for her to seek inspiration from the walls of galleries as opposed to the developments in the fashion world. "It might sound strange but I don't really pay attention to what goes on in fashion apart from that which is extremely obvious, " she says. "I don't always find inspiration in art either. I find it all over the place and often I just think about what women want to wear and what will work really."

This focus on what women enjoy wearing has been key to McCartney's success. Her detractors have maintained that it was her surname that secured her first job at Chloe (McCartney was appointed chief designer a year after her graduation from St Martins art college), despite the evidence that when she started it was an ailing fashion house and by the time she departed for Gucci its profits had reportedly quadrupled.

Notwithstanding the back-biting and ill-will, she has been a constant favourite with some of the world's most stylish women. Madonna famously commissioned her to design her wedding dress, and Hollywood A-listers such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Sarah-Jessica Parker are regularly seen in her clothes.

McCartney is more attractive in the flesh than she appears in photographs, which are invariably snapped by one of the many baying paparazzi which follow her around from time to time. She has huge blue eyes and long coppercoloured hair that does not appear to be laboriously blowdried or straightened into submission. Her skin has a glow and natural texture of one that has not been subject to the rigours of botox or the latest range of injectible fillers. For someone who occupies such a conspicuous position in a notoriously self-conscious industry, this reluctance to impede the march of time is remarkable. She actually looks like what my mother would describe as "outdoorsy", the type of girl who enjoys a long walk at the weekend and is not afraid to get her hair wet.

As we are talking, her constant companion peers not-sosubtley over my shoulder attempting to read the list of questions I have written in my notebook. Unfortunately for him my hieroglyphic scribbles are illegible to most, and in any event do not contain any queries on stepmothers and daughters because in between the Latvian models and the 'clad-all-in-black-army', any mention of family feuds seems ever-so-slightly distasteful.

McCartney describes her latest collection as being influenced by the style of the 1970s. "I've always been attracted to this particular era. If you look at the tailoring and line of my trousers you can see the influence, " she says. "I think my clothes give women a kind of inner confidence, the quiet kind which I consider to be the most attractive.

"I think it's important that a woman's clothes make her feel good in every sense of the word really. Ideally, I want her to feel happy, sexy, comfortable and feminine. I think when you put something on it can really make you feel 'something' and that's what I am interested in.

"You know, when a woman puts on a certain dress she feels more colourful or when she wears a suit she might feel more confident and that for me is the whole point; you express yourself through what you wear and how you choose to do that is interesting."

Also included in her collection are a range of shoes and accessories which are made in accordance with McCartney's animal-friendly policies. Unlike many of her peers who have reverted to using real fur, McCartney has steadfastly refused to bend her strict rules on the materials that she will and will not use in her collections.

In the 1990s the fashion industry was sympathetic to the views of animal rights groups and supermodels such as Naomi Campbell fronted advertising campaigns promoting the protection of animals. Times have changed however, and in recent years this noble stance has been shelved in favour of chinchilla trim and rabbit-fur boots produced by a number of designers including Roberto Cavalli and Dolce et Gabbana.

McCartney is adamant, and throughout her career has steadfastly refused to incorporate any kind of fur into her work.

"I find the use of fur in fashion to be so disappointing. It highlights everything that I am not that proud of about the industry. Such moral turnarounds are not very ethically sound and that is something I fight against in my work constantly. The only way people can make a difference is by not buying it and saying that it isn't fair to kill an innocent animal for a coat. I think most people know well enough to steer clear of that subject with me. I think they know me well enough by now. I'm not really the kind of person that changes her mind."