AS a little boy growing up in the North-East, visits to Newcastle were a real treat for Bruce Oldfield. Wandering through the streets with his foster mum, he would look up at the buildings in awe, overwhelmed by their size and beauty.

"I couldn't believe how big and grand everything was. From living in Hett, in a two-up, two-down, it was quite extraordinary. I couldn't tell you which streets or which square it was but it was the sheer scale that impressed me and it's stayed with me ever since," he recalls.

I suspect there is very little that awes Bruce today. Wearing a charcoal suit and white shirt, he's the epitome of pared-down style. He's charming, relaxed, and he exudes the self-confidence of a man who has carved his own, highly successful path in life.

His is the ultimate rags to riches story - the Barnardo's boy who became a fashion designer to some of the world's most beautiful women. "It's sickening, isn't it?" he says, grinning.

But after 30 years of fashion, the 53-year-old is branching out. In 2001, he designed the interiors for show homes on a multi-million pound development in the London suburb of Kew. Yesterday, he was back in Newcastle to launch the £17m restoration of a Georgian terrace.

"This is quite different from Kew and it's the only development of its type in the North-East. They are seriously gorgeous houses, the kind I would want to buy myself. You're going to have a beautiful shell with period features but with all the spec of a new-build. We're not creating museum pieces. These are contemporary homes."

Carlton Terrace was designed by North-East architect John Dobson at the peak of his career in the 1830s. It was one of the city's most fashionable streets, becoming home to well-to-do doctors, bankers and lawyers.

Today, it's a little sad-looking. The houses retain their elegant proportions but, for the last few years, most of them have been used as offices. The paint is beginning to peel on the windows and the railings outside are bent and battered, giving them an unkempt air.

During the next few months, they will be transformed into 14, five-bedroom townhouses, selling from between £800,000 and £2m.

"A few years ago you would never have thought there was a market for houses of that sort of price in Newcastle. You would expect that in London, not here, but there's a great feeling in Newcastle at the moment. It's so different from even five years ago. I've been coming back over the last 20 years and right now, it feels like something is really happening."

Although Bruce has his own signature style, he will be working closely with those buying the properties to create their own bespoke interior, offering advice on colour, lighting, textiles and furniture.

"It's rather like a client coming to me at Beauchamp Place for a dress. She's coming to me because she likes my style. She may not know exactly what I'm going to be able to do for her but she knows there's an affinity with what I stand for."

Glamour, quality and elegance are all part of it, but what he stands for above everything else is quality. That is why he has always resisted the temptation to branch out into ready-to-wear, he says. His first love is couture and he hopes to bring the same approach to his interior design work.

"It is very different in some ways but the obvious skills are the same - colour and soft furnishings and just balancing the details of the room. That's something that comes naturally to me. You find the core of the room and everything flows from that. I'm not trying to make it sound easy but I think I have a flair for it. It's something I've always enjoyed doing for my own homes."

In fact, he will be creating the kind of home he would like to live in himself. A self-confessed "dog freak" since he bought himself a Rhodesian Ridgeback called Babe, he will be designing the sort of home where dogs can run free, "wagging their tales with impunity".

"I don't want rooms where you're frightened to sit down. You've got to feel comfortable. It's got to be somewhere you can kick your shoes off and relax."

It's typical of his down-to-earth attitude. Despite being one of Britain's most successful designers, there is absolutely no edge to the man. He's confident without being arrogant and has never forgotten his roots. He's currently in the middle of writing his autobiography.

"I'm only up to 1980," he says rolling his eyes, "but it's great to be back in the North-East so I can do some more research into my early years."

Bruce was born in London in 1950, the illegitimate son of a white mother and West Indian father. His mother handed him over to Barnardo's, where he was initially cared for in a children's home. At the age of 13 months, he was fostered by Violet Masters and lived with her and four other foster children in Hett, near Spennymoor.

This was to be his home for the next 11 years and it was Violet, a seamstress and dressmaker, who instilled in him his love of fashion, teaching him how to sew on a battered old machine in the garden shed.

At the age of 13, he got into trouble for shoplifting and was sent to a Barnardo's home in Ripon. He was separated from Violet, the woman he still calls mum, but in retrospect, he realises the move was a beneficial one, making him even more determined to succeed. After leaving Ripon Grammar School, he enrolled at St Martin's School of Art in London, then a hothouse for fashion design. After graduating to critical acclaim, he worked in New York and Paris, before setting up his own business in 1975.

His skill in creating showstopping dresses that flatter women with curves soon attracted a list of celebrity clients, including, most famously, Princess Diana. During the 1980s, he designed more than 100 outfits for her, but he has also worked with Jerry Hall, Barbra Streisand, Bianca Jagger and Catherine Zeta Jones, among others.

The glitzy, glamorous style that characterised his work in the 1980s has given way to much softer, understated designs but he was surprised when recently watching a Tyne Tees documentary made in the 1980s to see how much of his philosophy has remained unchanged.

"I've been in the fashion business 30 years - God, 30 years of frocks! My emphasis has changed in that time, of course it has. At first, I was motivated by the drive to create an empire and that has been tempered as I've grown older, but I've always liked making proper frocks and I probably always will.

"I would like to do more interior design - I really enjoy it - but I'm not about to give up the day job. Definitely not."