The Ghost story we all fell in love with

She had a stormy marriage to a pop star, narrowly escaped the Manson murders, faced starvation in Brazil... then redefined fashion with her iconic label, Ghost. Kerry Potter meets the indomitable TANYA SARNE

stronger for 20 years). ‘You don’t think when you’re doing it. But looking back, I’m like, “Did I really do all that?” I must have been crazy.’

A single mother in possession of a good idea, she created Ghost because she needed to feed her two children, Claudia, now 53, and William, 50, after her tumultuous ten-year marriage to Mike imploded in the mid 70s. She had no fashion experience but knew how busy, modern women wanted to dress. Her pretty, floaty dresses, skirts and blouses could be styled up or down. They flattered curves, were machine washable and didn’t need ironing. Bingo. She brought in designers to ‘ghost-write’ her collections, and her USP was the fabric – viscose that had the appearance of vintage crepe.

YOU’S fashion director Shelly Vella is a lifelong ‘Ghost girl’ who owns over 100 pieces. ‘I’ve dressed loads of women in Ghost over the years,’ she says. ‘If people were stuck for something, I’d take them to the shop and it was the start of a love affair. Whether they were a size 16 or an 8, they’d put a dress on and feel incredible.’

A-listers such as actress Amanda Donohoe (pictured opposite) and supermodels were also devotees. ‘I’m taking payment in clothes,’ says Carla Bruni, in an archive TV interview that also features fangirling from Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington. One of teenage Kate Moss’s first shows was Ghost. ‘You could sense there was something special about her. She was incredibly photogenic,’ says Sarne. Is she still in touch with any of them? ‘I don’t keep in touch with anyone! I live in the country [she has a house in the New Forest] and talk to the trees.’

At its peak, Ghost had a £25 million turnover, 300 employees and stockists around the world. But in 2006, Sarne was ousted from the company by a new investor to whom she’d sold a controlling stake. That must have been devastating? ‘I’m over it now,’ she says. ‘I’ve learned acceptance, having done the 12 Steps at NA [Narcotics Anonymous].’ The brand is now owned by Touker Suleyman, the Dragons’ Den investor, and it still majors in flattering dresses and has a successful collaboration with M&S. ‘I’ve never been into one of the [standalone] shops. I don’t want to know,’ she sniffs. Acceptance only goes so far when you’ve been through something like that.

As for the Ab Fab connection, fashion PR Lynne Franks is usually namechecked as the inspiration for Edina Monsoon. But Sarne understands that her meeting with Saunders’s comedy partner Dawn French may have come into play. ‘Lynne sent Dawn to see me as she wanted me to do some clothing for her shops [French’s now defunct plus-size brand Sixteen47]. We ended up drinking a lot of champagne and my daughter, who was 15 at the time, came in and told me off,’ she says. ‘But Lynne does like to think it’s all her.

Recently, she said to me, “Tanya, it is all about me because Jennifer says so in her book.” It’s all right, Lynne, I don’t mind. You’re welcome to it!’

Sarne was born to refugees (French Jewish father, Romanian mother) who met in a London air-raid shelter in 1943. She credits her independent spirit to spending her first three years in a children’s home while her parents, both journalists, settled after the war. ‘A bad girl who answered back to authority’, she hated her grammar school and left the minute she could, working as a nightclub cage dancer, croupier,

SHE IS VIGILANT ABOUT NOT TURNING INTO A GRUMPY OLDER PERSON

model and, somewhat incongruously, a history teacher, having studied history at the University of Sussex.

By 1969 she was married to Mike Sarne, who took her to Los Angeles to build his new career as a film director. Their circle included Joan Collins and Anthony Newley, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate and Jack Nicholson. It sounds glamorous but Sarne tells me it was ‘horrible’. When he wasn’t working on set, Mike would disappear with his friends. ‘It was just after the summer of love, there were so many drugs and people were dying or going mad. I was a complete outsider. I was pregnant, I didn’t have a career, I sat around all day. It was all about my husband and his friends.’

Polanski asked the Sarnes to move in with his pregnant wife Tate, to keep her company while he was away. Fortuitously, Sarne refused. Shortly afterwards followers of cult leader Charles Manson murdered Tate and four others in the house. In the aftermath Polanski sought refuge at the Sarnes’ house in Malibu and she spent days in the kitchen making food for policemen. Haunted by the horror, when home alone, she’d barricade her bedroom door with furniture.

She later spent two years in Brazil, where Mike was making a movie. While he was working for long periods, she stayed in a wasp-infested shack in a tiny village. She contracted hepatitis and their children became malnourished. In 1975, she left him and jumped on a plane back to London to plot the next phase of her career. The following year, her mother died suddenly aged 55. ‘It affected me deeply,’ she says. Lost in grief, she started drinking and taking drugs. ‘It’s the point in my life I feel most shame about. My children were fed, clothed, got to school on time. I wasn’t hopeless. But I was using, I was drinking, I was working a lot. I would have loved to do things differently but it was all about survival.’ These days, she is ‘much more at peace with myself’. She has forgiven Mike, 82, and on occasion has lunch with him and their children. Her second husband, ‘lovely Andrew’ in the book, is Andrew Mcgibbon, a musician, comedian and writer 16 years her junior, who she met at a party in 1991. She plays tennis, does Sudoku and spends time with her grandchildren. Her entrepreneurial spirit remains undimmed – she is currently talking to two cashmere companies about a collaboration. And she is vigilant about not turning into a stereotypical grumpy elderly person. ‘Old people see young people having fun and all they can feel is their bones aching. I don’t intend to join them,’ she declares. ‘I am determined to keep smiling, no matter what.’

Free Spirit by Tanya Sarne will be published by Octopus on 6 April, price £20*. Read an extract from it in the main paper today