Fashion's spin doctor

Deep in the bowels of Scottish Ballet's Glasgow base, the successful Scots-born designer Hancher is up to her eyes in swimwear fabric, netting, and knicker elastic as the first of the company's male dancers queues for his costume fitting.

Hancher's remit was to bring her cutting-edge designer's eye to the company's new Burnsian ballet Ae Fond Kiss and reflect choreographer Mark Baldwin's modern approach with equally contemporary costumes.

``I wanted to create something that had a Hepburn fifties glamour, that was also physically comfortable for the dancers and their `internal constructions','' the 35-year-old explains, somewhat hampered by a mouthful of pins. ``As well as giving it that contemporary touch with the swimwear fabric you find in trendy clubgear,'' she says of the black and white tartan-inspired patterns.

This debut foray into the dance world, alongside her new High Street Miss Moneypenny retail line, is all part and parcel of the revamped, resuscitated, and ready-for-action Hancher MkII. For during her veteran 16-year stint in the fashion industry, Hancher appears to have hit more peaks than the Alps (at one point she had four shops supplying the likes of Madonna, Cher, and Duran Duran, was headhunted by Armani and confesses: ``More than #12m has physically passed through my hands''), and more troughs (liquidation, nine burglaries, two court cases, losing #70,000 in one month) than the average winter isobar chart, resulting in a dramatic career of stops and starts.

As she recalls, it was the dual influences of a go-getting mother with a successful chain of ``gown shops'' and a spellbinding visit to a Versace show in Italy at the impressionable age of 15 - ``I knew that this was the world for me'' - that led the fledgling designer to St Martin's School of Art in the London of the early eighties. Once there she fell in with an eclectic artistic crowd who counted punk heroes Siouxsie Sioux and Dave Vanian among their number, alongside Julian Sands, Derek Jarman, Captain Sensible, and Kim Wilde.

Then came a request to design clothes for pop band Tight Fit for their video The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Hancher was off. ``Within 18 months I went from #50 for my first video to #500 a day with my last,'' she smiles, amazed at the speedy rate of progression.

This breathless jump from grant-subsidised second-year student to a stand at the London Fashion Week, resulting in #25,000 of orders and an A-list of Top Ten popsters screaming for her services inevitably led to a brush with St Martin's.

`I left two months before my degree,'' she grimaces. ``But I don't regret it. I was always in trouble and was desperate to work because I found the mechanics of going to college too slow.''

As a highly articulate woman who favours the Pro Plus 100-words-per-second approach to conversation, this last comment comes as no surprise. Hancher is clearly not content to coast by in the tortoise lane of life - especially when it comes to her work.

``From 1983 to 1993 I worked full out from early morning to 4am,'' she states. Success and disaster played a continuous game of tag with each other in Hancher's life until the death of her father two years ago hit hard. ``That's when I came closest to giving up completely,'' she confesses. ``It made me think everything I was doing was just so pointless.''

She closed her business down, took an enforced break of six weeks following an operation to remove a cyst from an ovary, and reassessed her life among the peace and quiet of Regent's Park.

By January 1995 the ball of energy was back on form and Miss Moneypenny's clothing range was launched. Explaining her change of tack from exclusive Avenue Hausman supplier to High Street retailer, Hancher says: ``Before I produced fantastic clothes that no-one could afford but now I want to make a collection that's totally accessible but has all the nuances and intrigue of a catwalk show.''

Ironically, this fresh start has thrust her straight back into the melee of the worst aspects of the rag trade she'd tried to shed. Hancher is presently in the midst of suing two companies (Ozone and Lipsy) she alleges copied her designs.

She fires off a volley of criticism at the inadequacies of support from the British Fashion Council. ``It's their mentality that's destroyed the British fashion world,'' she rails, before explaining her imminent move to commute between a Parisian Miss Moneypenny's base and London. ``That's why I've come to the conclusion that the only way to further one's business is to move to the middle of Europe,'' she sighs.

In light of these battling forces, why on earth continue? Hancher smiles, takes a rare pause and then we're back on track. ``It's very difficult to be passionate in the face of adversity, especially when you have your bank manager, your accountant, your mother, and your daughter all saying `Get out of it', or `Mummy, why are you always at work?' But I suppose it's like being a heroin addict - you have to have the buzz.''

And with that extreme analogy the indefatigable designer is off once more into the harum-scarum life she loves and hates with a healthy passion.

n Miss Moneypenny's opens on the second floor of Internacionale in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, later this year. Ae Fond Kiss is part of Scottish Ballet's double bill with La Sylphide which premieres at Theatre Royal, Glasgow, tonight.

I was desperate to work becauseI found the mechanics of going to college too slow