Stella McCartney
designer
Stella McCartney was always destined for fame - there is that surname for a start! Daughter of Beatle Paul and mum Linda - Stella grew up in a special household indeed, and started making a name for herself in 1995 age 23 at her catwalk show to end her degree at St Martins School of Fashion. Not only were her famous parents in attendance (naturally), but to top it off she also had pals Kate Moss and Naomi Cambell do a turn down the catwalk. Stella has been rising to 'stellar' heights since that day...
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Julien Macdonald
designer
The designer's roller coaster ride to success has landed him in the haute couture limelight. Even as a student at London's Royal College of Art, where he graduated from, his designs have graced the catwalks alongside Lacroix, Dior and Comme des Garcons. Karl Lagerfeld, working with the RCA on their annual project, recognized MacDonalds talent and commissioned him to work for Chanel and his own KL collection.
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Elle's business grows - 28/11/02
Elle's bump is not the only thing growing, now 38 and pregnant with a second child to partner Arpad Busson, Macpherson is designing her next collection of Elle Macpherson Intimates lingerie.

It's been a leading brand in Australia for 13 years, and was launched in Britain last year. Her lingerie business was up 21 per cent in the last quarter in Australia, as well as a 10 per cent growth in the UK.


Elle to be a model mum again - 11/08/02
Elle Macpherson is expecting her second baby. The 39-year-old Australian supermodel, whose new lingerie line has increased her personal fortune to an estimated £21 million, is thought to be hoping for a girl, to provide a sister for her four-year-old son Flynn.

Macpherson got engaged to Flynn's father, 42-year-old banker Arpad Busson, earlier this year, but the pair have yet to set a date for their wedding. Elle's baby is due next February.

Elle's Notting Hill pad is burgled - 01/07/02
Thieves overcame an elaborate security system to break into the £2 million Holland Park home the 38-year-old supermodel shares with Swiss banker Arpad Busson and their four-year-old son Flynn.

Born 29 March 1964 in Sydney, Australia, the six foot beauty is an international supermodel and is perhaps best known for her record of four covers of Sport's Illustrated's highly anticipated Annual Swimsuit issue. Confirming her as one of the most recognizable super models of the world, Time magazine ran a cover story on her career entitled ''The Big Elle'' in 1986.

Transcending the traditional career path of the super model, in 1989 Elle established her own company, Elle Macpherson Intimates in Australia. As Chairperson, she has piloted the company to become the country's most recognized lingerie brand name. In addition to making her mark in the world of business, Elle is also making a name for herself as an actress.

In 1993, Elle made her feature film debut in ''Sirens'' starring opposite Hugh Grant and Sam Neil. Establishing herself as a talented actress, she was offered a two year multi media deal with Miramax Films.Elle's film credits include a solid roster of roles in Franco Zeffirelli's ''Jane Eyre'', ''If Lucy Fell'' opposite Sarah Jessica Parker, Barbara Streisand's ''The Mirror Has Two Faces'' and ''Batman & Robin''.

Elle's Fitness video ''Your Personal Best Workout/The Body '' became Billboard Magazine's no. 1 special interest video in 1995 and is distributed worldwide.

She has one son with her fiance Arpad Busson.

Tanya Sarne
Director and business brain behind Ghost
After travelling Through the United States, South America and Europe she set up a business importing Peruvian Alpaca knits. Fresh from this success, she introduced two Scandinavian labels to the UK both of which became hugely successful. These were "In Wear" and "Laize Adzer. Tanya launched her own sportswear label in 1978, "Miz" and was the first UK clothing label to promote sportswear. The conception of Ghost in 1984 was an opportunity to channel her creative energies into a new collection, designed by women for women. "These are real clothes for real women". Ghost's signature flowing silhouette replaced the strict tailoring of the past decade. In June 1997, Ghost opened the doors of its first major retail store on Ledbury Road, London W11. For information on the label contact enquiries@ghost.ltd.uk

12/00
Congratulations to Bella Freud and partner the writer Robert Fox on the birth of their son Johnny Lux Fox.

Luella Bartley
Ex-fashion Journalist turned fashion designer
Designer baby - 07/02/03
Fashion designer and Notting Hill resident Luella Bartley who was originally famed for making clothes 'to get drunk and fall over in' is expecting her first baby with boyfriend David Sims.

But being three and a half months pregnant is not going to a affect her blossoming design career - her rep said that at the moment Luella 'feels fantastic, and is in New York preparing for her Autumn / Winter show!

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It's a brave woman who swaps a successful career for the uncertainty of life as a fashion designer. It's an even braver one, perhaps, who gives up a career as a fashion journalist to put her money where her mouth is. But that's exactly what Luella Bartley, formerly with the Evening Standard and Vogue, has done.

Her feminine versions of "city boy" shirts, quilted horsey jackets in baby pastels - struck an immediate chord when she showed her debut collection last season, winning orders from Henri Bendel and Whistles. Luella, 26, currently has a reputation for being the kookiest British designer. The former journalist made a huge impact with her first collection two years ago when she presented English tomboyinspired designs.

To add to her cool, Luella cites Stella McCartney, the designer, and Katie Grand, fashion director of The Face magazine and London's favourite stylist, among her best friends.
"I live in Ladbroke Grove. It's where I grew up so it feels like a base" is what she has to say about living in Notting Hill.

Isabel Kristensen
Designer
Danish-born celebrity dressmaker whose glamorous designs can be spotted at the Oscars and other major social events.
Her dresses are those you would find in fairy tales. Her shop is in Knightsbridge at 33 Beauchamp Place.
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Isabell Kristenson's new collection was modelled at the Reach For The Stars Charity Gala.
She has admitted recently her desire to be the first designer in space. "I've just finished my first zero gravity test flight and its an extraordinary feeling" she said.

www.bridgesandgowns.com

Jade Jagger
model,designer,mother
Jade's childhood was dominated by her parent's high-profile, globe- trotting careers. While Mick would play with the Stones in New York or be courting Jerry Hall in Barbados, Bianca would be holding court in Cannes or living it up with Andy Warhol in the New York nightclub Studio 54. Her parents divorced when Jade was only seven and, after an acrimonious split, her mother won custody while her father was granted "reasonable access".
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Theo Fennell
Jewellery designer
Theo Fennell's boost in sales - 11/12/02
Theo Fennell is reporting a boost in trading as a new management team increased sales. His jewels, which have attracted customers such as Elton John and Victoria Beckham, rose 15% for the six months to September 30.

The jeweller who lives in Notting Hill has 12 wholesale outlets in the UK and four stores in London.

Theo Fennell also expects sales to increase further over the festive season, so will there be a Theo diamond under your tree? - you wish!

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More than 25 years ago and not long out of art school, Theo Fennel opened his first workshop in Hatton Gardens, from there he began designing and making his first pieces of jewellery and private clients.

In 1982, Theo opened a shop and studio premises in the Fulham Road, 1989 Harrods invited him to be one of the main jewellers represented in its opulent Fine Jewellery Room, he work by now was getting noticed. In June 1996 Theo Fennel was floated and in the same year Theo Fennel PLC launched a new storey fslagship store. In 2000 Theo Fennel PLC continues to expand globally.

Theo is now firmly recognised as one of the country's talented and innovative jeweller and silversmiths.

Delphine Boel
artist
Delphine was unearthed as the illegitimate daughter of King Albert II of Belgium last year in an unauthorised biography of Queen Paola. She is the product of a brief affair between the king and Sybille de Selys Longchamp, a Belgian aristocrat.

Delphine moved to London with her mother as a child, and was sent away to school at Le Rosey in Gstaad. She 'rebelled and ran away from these posh rich homeless fellow students, who had at least five homes and no parents, only money'.

Delphine eventually graduated with merit from the Chelsea School of Art, and now makes papier-mâché sculptures at the Great Western Studios near Paddington. Her last show featured a multicoloured cow wearing a crown, which excitable tabloids saw as a dig at her royal connections.

Trinny Woodall
Fashion journalist. has office with Susannah Constantine
Trinny and Susannah off to L.A - 15/01/04
Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine are off to America to tell folks over how to dress instead.

They have been asked to make a pilot of their popular show What Not To Wear. I wonder how the residents of L.A will react to being told that they have no style or a fabulous bottom? Actually, they'd probably really like the latter - who wouldn't?

Meanwhile, the rumble in the jungle with Carol Vordermann trickles on - apparently Carol said that the pair 'looked like a bag of spanners'. You have to laugh really don't you?

Matching Accessories! - 6/5/03
Notting Hill lady Trinny and her partner in clothing crime Susannah have managed to successfully co-ordinate their next project - babies!

Yes, Trinny and Susannah are both expecting babies! Susannah is expecting her third child while Trinny waited to pass the critical three months before announcing that she was also pregnant, as she has suffered two miscarriages in the past.

Both stars are starting to film their third series of What Not To Wear - and they now might work on a show about how to wear maternity clothes and show off that bump with style! We wish them both well!

A million dollar look - 19/12/02
Fashion dictators Trinny and Susannah have netted themselves a cool £1million book deal.

Their most recent book What Not To Wear, which has already sold in excess of 250.000 copies, so they'll be laughing all the way to the shops!!

What Not To Do to Trinny & Susannah - 16/12/02
We told you last week that Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine had been made into a cheeky cartoon titled Fatty & Skinny in Viz comic.

In the cartoon, 'Schoolgirl Torments With Fatty And Skinny', the pair pick on a classmate in a hand-me-down uniform.

It seems Trinny and Susannah are not amused and are threatening to sue Viz for defamation of character. Watch this space...

Fat & thin - 03/12/02 Courtesy of Heat Magazine
Trinny and Susannah have been made into a cheeky cartoon titled Fatty & Skinny in Viz comic. They're school bullies who pick on those less fashionable than themselves. But their games teacher has the last laugh - he makes them run around in PE kits from Lost Property.

Trinny in 'When not to queue'- 29/11/02
Trinny Woodall caused a bit of a stir at the fashionable 202 restaurant in Westbourne Grove this week, and the end result was the assistant manager was fired. Trinny - what have you done?!

When Trinny arrived at the restaurant she went straight to the front of the queue and Steven Marks (202 owner, French Connection supremo and old pal of Trinny's) insisted she be given a table immediantly. Kate Hardwick (the assistant manager) did as he asked but explained that there had been people waiting to be seated for a very long time. In fact - one couple walked out after waiting half an hour for a table.

But Steven denies Kate was sacked for protesting. 'She was fired because her attitude was not right' he explained. 'I was sitting in the restaurant with friends of mine and the service was absolutely dismal. Trinny had nothing to do with her being sacked.'

Susannah and Trinny met through a mutual friend, Susannah said "We had known each other by reputation for a long time but I didn't like what Trinny stood for, I believed she was very Euro trashy! Portowebbo interview

What Not To Wear - Update - 20/09/02
The companion book to Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine's hit BBC programme What Not to Wear has just been published.
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Style guru gives birth to her second child 16/03/01
Congratulations to Susannah Constantine from Ready2Shop who gave birth to her second child yesterday, Mother and her newborn daughter named Iris are said to be doing fine.

Get the book!
Ready to Dress The authors' mission is to show women how to take stock of their shape and dress accordingly for every occasion. They list the necessities in a wardrobe, show the best and worst cuts for each of the six main body types, taking into account personality and lifestyle. Definitely one for the girls, Ready to Dress is a light and fluffy tour through the heart of the dull and dingy wardrobe, it certainly isn't brain surgery but, hey, it was never supposed to be.

Getting it all off Porn has become so commonplace we hardly notice it - yet it is turning us into a nation of peeping toms.
May 10, 2000 Jonathan Freedland @ The Guardian

What did you watch on TV last night? Was it Walter: The Secret Life of a Victorian Pornographer on Channel 4, with its promise of steam and period spice - or Anna Karenina, which offered the same winning combination in billboards and newspaper ads showing a horizontal Anna above the slogan "Heroine or Harlot?"
But let no one believe this is the slime of the dumbed-down gutter, faraway from the upper reaches of British life. No, sex is the currency of all classes. Whenever they can conjure half an excuse, the posh papers put schoolgirls on the front and long features on Charlie Dimmock's nipples inside. The sloanoid founders of Ready2shop.com, Susannah Constantine and Trinny Woodall, launched their business by posing semi-naked for posters that filled the railway stations of the land. They were following a lead set by the Rylstone and District branch of the Women's Institute, who famously stripped off for a fund-raising calendar last year (and who are at it again now to promote Surf).

'They wanted to give us a good scrubbing'
February 14, 2000
There are worse jobs in the Metropolitan police force these days than standing on guard outside Peter Mandelson's Notting Hill flat. The secretary of state for Northern Ireland's, as we all know, keeps himself pretty much to himself. But downstairs ...

Geordie Greig
Editor of Tatler
Pulled off a journalistic coup which will have his rivals seething by interviewing Prince Andrew for the June issue of Tatler. Geordie used an historic thread to interest the Prince into talking to him, his grandfather, naval surgeon Sir Louis Greig, was a close confidant of Prince Andrew's grandfather, Prince Albert, who became George V1.

Prince Andrew was more open and honest than any other interviews done before. Greig lives in Notting Hill with his wealthy American wife and son Jasper and has commented about the number of famous people living nearby "It brings a New York element of cool to be around famous people, but at the same time we're all relaxed about living near each other, we treat each other like any other neighbours."

Geordie was educated at Eton - he has recently completed a book called "Inside Court", which is about his grandfather, a friend of George VI - and his home (near Coleridge). " I've been very lucky. I wasn't born well connected, I've created what I am." Geordie commented, when asked about his fame and wealth.

Nicola Formby
model and editor-at-large for Tatler. AA Gill's 'blonde'
Class act
October 11 1999
"Tatler," says Geordie Greig, in his quiet but insistent voice, "is going to be an intelligent magazine." He's sitting at his desk on the third floor of Condé Nast's HQ, Vogue House, conducting me through next month's issue - the first he's put his name to, such are the long lead times of the glossies, since leaving his post as literary editor of the Sunday Times for the smart set in June.

Male orders
June 28 1999
It took less than three hours, from Jane Procter's highly publicised evacuation of the editor's office at Tatler, for the first applications to start arriving for her job. Three letters arrived by motor cycle messenger the same day, followed by five more pushed through my home letterbox over night, 4 emails, 11 faxes, 7 telephone applications and 41 letters. In total, 71 people threw their hats into the ring for what was to become the most hyped, most hysterically contested magazine editorship that I can remember.

Nicola has a big say in the kind of gorgeous jewellery and clobber featured on the shopping pages. She is the partner of AA Gill, the Sunday Times writer who made his name at Tatler in the 1980s. Besides her "roaming, undefined role", Nicola has a flirty interview column called Blonde Date.

Street Smart By Nicholas Coleridge.
October 20 1999
Somehow you don't expect the head of the British arm of a multimillion-dollar publishing empire to write a readable novel. Indeed, Nicholas Coleridge must be sick of judgements of his fiction being made with reference to his other life as a senior executive at Vogue House, London headquarters of Condé Nast. Managing Director of Condé Nast's nine UK titles, including Vogue and GQ, Coleridge has responsibility for a London-based staff of over 400.

Born in 1957 and educated at Eton and Cambridge, Coleridge is a former editor of society magazine Harpers & Queen. He was appointed Editorial Director at Condé Nast in 1989. As MD, he has overseen buoyant growth in the magazines and a string of new launches - Condé Nast Traveller being the latest. His editorial appointees include Alexandra Shulman at Vogue, Sarah Miller at CN Traveller, Sue Crewe at House & Garden and Geordie Grieg at Tatler. Aside from Condé Nast, Coleridge is a prolific and widely-travelled author. He followed The Fashion Conspiracy, his acclaimed exposé of the fashion business, with an account of a round-the-world journey and Paper Tigers - a collection of profiles of newspaper moguls and With Friends Like These, a fast-paced thriller set in the world of glossy magazines, was published in 1997. A sequel, Streetsmart, is published in October. Married to book reviewer Georgia Metcalfe and with four children, Coleridge lives in Notting Hill.

Claudia Schiffer
Supermodel cum actress
Born: Aug 25 1970 Rheinberg/Duesseldorf, Germany
Father: Heinz Schiffer, Business jurist
Mother: Gudrun Schiffer
Siblings: Stefan, Ann Carolin, Andreas. (Claudia is the oldest)
Interests: Painting (mostly flowers and small animals) Reading.
Earns: $30 000 per show.
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Laura Bailey
Model
Born in 1972, Bailey's modelling career began when she was spotted on London's Kings Road, after graduating with a first-class English degree from Southampton University.
But she made tabloid headlines when she formed an enduring friendship with Hollywood actor Richard Gere, former husband of Cindy Crawford whom she met at a reception for the Dalai Llama at a London hotel.
She later moved to New York to pursue her modelling and acting career, also writing a year-long New York diary for the Condé Nast website. In 1996, Bailey won a modest part in Abel Ferrara's movie, The Blackout. This was followed in 1997 with a role in action movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, for which she returned temporarily to London. Sadly however, most of her scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. Her modelling credits include campaigns for Guess? and Pretty Polly.
She counts Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein among her friends.

Laura Bailey & Hugh Grant? -13/02/01
Hugh Grant was spotted enjoying dinner with a very pretty woman, who turned out to be none other than Richard Gere's ex lover model Laura Bailey.The pair dined at Nobu - they are friends so need to read more into it, but why then when the couple spotted the paparazzi after their meal they suddenly walked off in opposite directions. Beautiful Laura lives with Hugh Grant's pal Eric Fellner, whose production company is making Hugh's new film, About A Boy, also starring Robert De Niro.

Heir's fiancee won't prune career ambitions
January 10 1999
She's set to wed an heir worth £50 million, but in the meantime Lili Maltese is truly married to her job - publicising National Prune Week. Lili, 24, made headlines when she became engaged to the man dubbed Britain's most eligible bachelor - Henry Dent-Brocklehurst.
But she is hoping for an even more fruitful role as spokesperson for National Prune Week between March 16 and 22. The Hawaiian-born model is so committed as the prune frontwoman that she had the words California Prunes 'tatooed' above her left breast.
She claimed prunes had great qualities - they gave you a real energy boost, were great for hangovers and a proven aphrodisiac.
The Daily Mail reported that Dent-Brocklehurst, 31, heir to a £50m fortune and the stately Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, was rumoured to have had a dalliance with Liz Hurley but had always denied it.

Bernie Zimmerman
Couture Jeweller
When Bernie moved to London after living in New York for five years he chose to make Notting Hill his base because almost everyone he knows lives here. He says that, being a foreigner, it's important to feel at home and he loves knowing that he can just walk out of his front door and bump into a mate, which probably happens all the time as he's extremely good company and one of the nicest guys on the local party scene.

He's also the business brain behind Ex Ovo jewellery, the company he set up with his sister, Katrin Zimmermann, whose extensive knowledge of the art and style of the Far East influences her extraordinarily simple pieces in which every line is an essential part of the design.

Ex Ovo has been praised as "some of the most provocative contemporary couture jewellery around" by Time Out New York. In Katrin's own words:" The beauty of an object lies in its sparseness - the space around it is almost more important that the object itself."

If you're not going to be popping into Bergdorf Goodman in the near future, you can lust after their latest collection, in silver and leather, in Ruby Red and The Cross. Who to spot wearing Ex Ovo in town: Kate Moss, Iris Palmer, Poppy de Villeneuve, Sophie Dahl, Iris Palmer, Keith Richards and his dogs. Jessica Morris