Four British designers - Lezley George, Fabio Piras, shoe-maker Patrick Cox and Treacy - paraded their wares. There were audible gasps from the audience as Treacy's 25 amazing visions appeared like some fantastic mobile aviary of swooping plumage.

'I like to have an opportunity to show people what a hat is capable of,' remarks Treacy. 'Asian people feel that they can't wear hats because it makes them stand out, which is the opposite of what they believe, but they look fantastic in them. It's a psychological barrier and I want to inspire them.' It's the morning after the show, and Treacy is wound up, like a restless cat, on a sofa in his hotel suite. Hotel rooms are usually sterile environments in which to conduct interviews, but Treacy's already has the comfy, mildly blitzed appearance of home.

Overflowing ashtrays, beer cans, vases filled with vivid flowers from Mongkok market and Philip Treacy boxes are dotted around the room, the door bell rings continuously, friends and models wander in and out - at one point there are eight people in the room but Treacy chats on imperturbably.

'I like to travel en masse,' he explains. 'I get a kick out of taking everyone to exotic locations. It's no fun by yourself, it's better with others.' Perhaps this need for company is because he is the seventh in a family of eight children. Despite the constant British label, Treacy is actually Irish and grew up in Galway.

'I do work in England, which is why I'm always called British,' he says.

'Look at John Rocha [the Hong Kong designer now based in Dublin]. He's always been touted as Irish and he's Chinese.' And Treacy is, he declares softly, very Irish.

What does this mean, exactly? 'Irish people are very democratic, they're not grand. And that's an advantage in the fashion world. They're very open with people because there isn't a lot of baggage. I come from a normal background. I had a charmed childhood with a wonderful family. There were about 50 children at my school and I didn't see a city until I was 17, and I wouldn't wish it any other way.' The city he saw at 17 was the fair one of Dublin, where he attended the National College of Art and Design. For as long as Treacy can remember, he was always sketching and making things, a state so natural he simply never questioned it.

'I don't know where all that came from. I don't want to sound grand or anything but I was told as a child that I had 'a gift', and that was an easy explanation, a way of not wondering about it.' In 1988, when he was 21, he won a scholarship to London's Royal College of Art and came of age. The RCA wanted to set up a millinery course and Treacy was the guinea pig who quickly assumed an almost mythical status: it's no coincidence that his logo is a unicorn. He fiddled about, creating and learning within a vacuum, but he was floundering a little until he went to see John Galliano at the end of his first year.

Galliano had a hatmaker called Shirley Hex and she filled in all the technical gaps in Treacy's education, eventually becoming his tutor at the RCA.

The word 'hex' happens to mean a witch or spell, and there is certainly the element of a fairytale about Treacy's ascent. A second good witch now enters the story, stage left. Her name is Isabella Blow, and anyone connected with the world of fashion knows that hers is a formidable name with which to contend. She is an eccentric, strong-willed British aristocrat and a generous patron of young designers.

'I was really taken aback by Isabella,' Treacy admits with a grin. 'When I first met her, I thought: 'God, she's not from Galway.' She'd seen my hats and she kept ringing up the college to find out my schedule for the next six months, and it turned out she was getting married and wanted me to do her hat.' He concocted a golden wimple to go with her purple wedding dress ('It was wild') and then just as he was thinking he was going to miss her extraordinary presence, she rang him while she was on honeymoon to commission the next hat.

In the end, he lived with her and her (presumably long-suffering) husband until he found his own place, in between jetting backwards and forwards to do the couture shows for Karl Lagerfeld, Valentino and Versace, amongst many other luminaries.

Now he still does the couture shows but he is concentrating more on his own ranges, including a cheaper diffusion line for the British chain store Debenhams. This is a welcome venture for fans because a Philip Treacy hat can easily set you back at least $5,000, but the man himself says his creations are a - relatively - cheap form of cosmetic surgery. And although the wacky versions get all the publicity, there is a more sober side to the fairytale image: Treacy hats are not just about gasps. The magic he weaves can also be quietly, desirably beautiful.

Treacy turned 30 in May this year. He says he has no worries about the future, that he never thinks beyond next week, if that. 'Life is short, you have to grab it when you can,' he says.

'I came from nowhere and I got everywhere because of my hands. Friends of mine from school spend their lives packing cans . . . I've got great drive and tunnel vision, and I aimed high. There was only ever one route and this was it, and I feel secure in that. Yes, I've been very, very lucky. But you make your own luck.'