Designer Adam Lippes was in London this week to unveil the latest collection of his to be stocked by MatchesFashion.com (see him above, posing with one of the store's founders, Ruth Chapman). Two seasons in, the New York designer, who trained with Oscar de la Renta, is feeling upbeat and confident that you'll want to steal his clothes, an ingeniously upmarket mix of American sportswear and modern basics, inspired (loosely) by the Grateful Dead.

We spoke to him at the store's Townhouse about the look and the line that bears his name.

The stylists we work with always say ‘you want to make something you’d want to steal’. The customer should want to put it in their bag and walk out – if you don’t want to steal it, what’s the point? We don’t need more stuff in our lives.

I’m about creating, for the most part, very simple clothes that are not basic at all – in the detail, the fabric, how they’re constructed, once you’ve spent time looking at them. When I started this brand I didn’t want the runway to have anything to do with how we showed it, so we present it in my house with five or ten models where people can really look at the clothes.

Claire Underwood [from House of Cards] is the perfect woman for any of this collection – I like that you just said that. People always ask me to give them the name of one celebrity that I’d like to dress and I never know who. But, yes, she’s successful in all aspects... Actually, wait, she's HORRIBLE!

I don’t talk about ‘our woman’ in the way many American designers do. You know, 'she’s 40, she's had plastic surgery...' We have a wall in our studio of the favourite looks from each collection and this pinpoints who she is. When we get distracted in the design studio, we’ll be like ‘is she wearing this?’ Our woman really appreciates quality, she’s very considered because she’s not flashy and she doesn’t want to wear a costume.

Oscar de la Renta taught me everything about design, I was very lucky to grow up there. He taught me about quality, fit, about dressing a woman, I really took his sense of colour. I took those things away with me when I left.

I always wanted to be a fashion designer. I was drawn to it. But it wasn’t at all something I could be – I'm from a small town and my family are all doctors. So I went to Cornell University and studied psychology. And then I went to Paris for a year, and I started going out a ton to nightclubs basically. I met models, I met fashion designers, I started going to their studios and I started going to see models on shoots. And I realiseed it was really a business, not some silly little thing. I thought I’m going to do it, it’s been my dream my whole life, I’m going to do it.

I think not going to fashion school has really given me a considered approach to design, it’s part of building this wardrobe for a woman's life.

Adam Lippes is available now from MatchesFashion.com here