THIS LIFE 27-year-old Willie Chambers works at Vv Rouleaux ribbon emporium by day and organises parties by night. it's a juggling act not to get tied in knots�

"People think, Well, what can you do with a ribbon?' But there are endless possibilities. People buy ribbon to decorate mirrors, to put on to walls, on hats, on shoes. There are so many things. A ribbon is not just a ribbon these days. There are stiff ribbons, soft ribbons, see-through ribbons, ribbons to make curtains out of. It's great to use a ribbon for your hair or to wrap a present, but I think people get stuck at that. You have to think out of the box and use ribbon for all different purposes, have a bit of imagination.

I normally get up about 7am, have a simple breakfast and a shower and then get off to work. The shop opens at 9.30am, but I tend to be there about 8.45. My only ritual in the morning is getting my coffee fix on the way in. Work at the shop starts with me and the manager, Lucy, organising the day's tasks and dealing with mail orders from the previous night on our website.

The thing about VV Rouleaux is it's not like an ordinary retail shop. Nothing is ever the same, so our display can never be the same. We have got our own style that we really have to reflect in everything from a simple table display to a Christmas tree, like the one we've got now with parrots on.

It's pretty mad just now because we're trying to get the shop ready for a Christmas shopping event, so we're busy decorating and making things. People come in here and if they see something they like they'll buy it just because they feel they may never get it again. We display everything in here as it would be in the home, so it really inspires people.

Nearly everybody in the shop works on the displays. We've got tables, wall displays, window displays - just now we've got six trees we all have to decorate. I've always been very visual. As a kid I drew silly cards for my mum for birthdays and Christmas. I did a BA honours in textile design in 2001 and started working here with VV Rouleaux about three years ago. I think if you're artistic and you want to be in fashion and textiles, Glasgow is not the easiest place to have an outlet. But as soon as I discovered the shop was opening, I thought it was a great opportunity.

It was difficult tuning into the VV Rouleaux style at first. Annabel Lewis, our director, is an entity in herself. She's hard to live up to, but a little essence of her is always in the shop. We create that all the time. Annabel visits throughout the year and is always coming up with new ideas and dealing with designers down in London, so it's great that she passes that on to us.

For instance at the moment we've got a traditional red-coloured Christmas tree, but we twisted it a little bit by putting butterflies and metallic birds on it, and people just love it. Today someone just bought a whole load of stock off a Christmas tree because they thought it was fantastic. You do see people getting excited. When that buzz is in the shop they just go crazy for it. You have to sell as well as create the displays, but we hope the displays do the sell without the hard-sell, because it's lovely stock.

What is really selling at the moment? Just now the most popular Christmas range is our faux glass range which looks great on mirrored surfaces or on glass. But the best-selling ribbon is the double-sided velvet and gros-grain which is great for shoes, has a traditional style and can be used for millinery. That's really popular right now. There are some hardcore ribbon-lovers out there. They're quite scary. I mean, I was never into ribbons all through college. It wasn't until I started here that I discovered what you can actually do with them and I thought, well, ribbons are all right.

Because Christmas comes so early, for us working here, you tend to lose a bit of the magic, but I still think the whole aesthetic of Christmas is great. I think when I was a kid, I always insisted that we made Christmas decorations. I'm sure my mother's still got some of them. Going back to Annabel, she is sort of make-do too, and for a family it's such a great working method, because I think we're such a throwaway society. It's good to have a make-do aesthetic. That's what so great about this shop. People come in and buy the simplest ribbon and create something different Another wonderful thing is that we get so many different customers. One minute I could be speaking to an interior designer about tie-backs and trimmings, the next making and designing a feather headpiece for someone who is going to a wedding. We make tassels, we make masks, we dress people's hats. We'll trim anything if we can.

At about 6pm I finish at VV Rouleaux and then start working on my other job as the artistic director for an events management company called Angel Fish. I can be designing anything from weddings to gala dinners and do most of this from home. The last three months I've had an event every weekend. It's been totally hectic, but worth it. And it's coming to an end with Christmas.

For me, work finishes at different times, sometimes midnight or it could be 2am, just depends what's going on work-wise. Next year I start a millinery course. I've been doing sketches and designing things. That's the way I wind down of an evening. I'm not a big hat wearer myself. I would love to say I was, but I wear big glasses and it doesn't really work. But I do love hats and I've always had this urge to learn. I always want to try something new."

VV Rouleaux, 94 Miller Street, Glasgow, 0141 221 2277