Swedish tastemaker Emilia de Poret on why her Range Rover is "a better office than the office"

For Emilia de Poret, the working day often begins in a parked car. Once the children have been dropped at school, she sometimes drives to Djurgården, the island park close to her home in Stockholm, and stays there a while before the day properly starts, taking her first calls from the driver's seat. "Sometimes it's a better office than the office," she says.

It's a fitting place to begin, because so much of her life happens in transit. Her weeks move between meetings, shoots, events, and family, and the car has become the place that holds those worlds together. And, as for many fashion industry insiders, the occasional changing room. "The car becomes almost a space in between those parts of my day," she says. "Sometimes it's for a call, sometimes music, sometimes complete silence."

The car itself was never a difficult decision. "Range Rover has always felt like a very natural choice for me," she says. "There's a quiet confidence to it, it doesn't need to prove anything, which I really like." It's a quality she looks for well beyond the car. De Poret has built a reputation on having a discerning eye, and she credits it to instinct sharpened by time. "I've always had a strong appreciation for quality and craftsmanship, but with time I've become much more confident in trusting my own eye." These days, the verdict comes fast. "Today, I know quite quickly when something feels like me, and when it doesn't. It goes for everything in my life, my wardrobe, my car... even my husband."

Open her wardrobe and you might expect a spare row of perfect pieces. In fact, there are rather a lot of clothes, and the same ones simply keep coming out. "I'm more curated than edited," she says. "I have a lot of clothes, but I wear the same pieces over and over again and I've never been very interested in chasing the latest trend."

She runs her company much the way she dresses. Her team is small, and many of its members have been with her for years, which she puts down to "trust, quality and building relationships that last". Whether she is getting dressed or building a business, she is looking for integrity in how something is designed and made, and anything that lacks long-term appeal is quickly dismissed. "I would much rather choose something once, very well, than constantly feel the need to replace it."

Her leadership style, and her finesse as a founder, are arguably both key to her success. "I don't wake up thinking, today I'm going to lead by example. But I am very conscious of how I show up." For her, that means doing the work and owning the mistakes as readily as the achievements. It has also meant letting go of the idea that a leader must know everything. "Earlier in my career, I probably thought you needed to have all the answers. Today, I see much more strength in staying curious and surrounding yourself with brilliant people."

That curiosity comes with a healthy scepticism about being told what to want, and her advice to anyone building something of their own is simple. "Don't choose for the person you think you should be. Choose for the person you actually are, and for the life you actually live." It takes confidence, she admits, when we're constantly shown what a certain kind of life is supposed to look like. "The most personal things are usually built slowly."

Slow, in her case, has never meant settled. She believes we all have several careers within us, and she has no intention of ruling one out simply because it doesn't fit what she has done before. "Maybe that's also how I think about leadership now: having a strong sense of who you are, without becoming too attached to who you've been."

It's a balance she sees in her Range Rover, a car that evolves "without ever feeling like it's chasing a trend." "There's such a strong identity there," she says, "and I think that's what creates loyalty." Her affection for it, though, lives in the small things. The reclining rear seats have long been a favourite with her children, and the refrigerated compartment between the front seats comes into its own whenever she has picked up something that needs to stay cold. "They're small details, but they make everyday life that little bit easier," she says. "To me, that's real luxury."

Those details matter most once the week winds down. Weekends bring trips to her favourite food shops around Stockholm for ingredients, and days when, as she puts it, "bags go in the back and we leave the city". The purpose changes, but the experience stays the same. As de Poret puts it: "Different purpose, but the same feeling of ease."