Royalty & rock stars - SARAH'S BEST DRESSED LIST

The Kiwi couturier recalls the heady days of dressing princesses and pop stars

- Elisabeth Easther

Sarah Burren, 61, is the sort of person you'd like to be seated next to at a dinner party, to hear her priceless anecdotes of rubbing shoulders with royalty and rock stars when she worked as a freelance couturier in London in the mid-1980s.

"One designer I worked for was Anouska Hempel," tells Sarah. "She had a salon in Pond Lane, where she created clothes for the likes of Princess Diana, Princess Margaret, Sarah Ferguson and Koo Stark, another one of Prince Andrew's former flames."

Born in Wellington's Lower Hutt, Sarah's family moved to Fiji when she was eight, where her parents started a children's theatre, with her dad designing the sets and mother making the costumes and props.