<B>Reger in a twist?</B>

We have been publishing profiles of foreigners living in Mauritius since the launch of express-outlook. One of them passed away last week. How could we ignore the event when she was the woman who made the sexiest lingerie in Britain?

Janet Phillips. Rings a bell? OK, how about Janet Reger? Still nothing? Think underwear. Not the Bridget Jones? big cotton pants type or the tacky nylon type you get from sex shops but rather the expensive frilly lingerie, the sexy kind of luxurious undies reserved for exciting occasions.

British-born Janet Reger, also known as the first Lady of Lingerie, lived in Mauritius for 14 years. She didn?t leave because she got fed up with her adoptive home but because there was a greater calling. Suffering from breast cancer, Janet was rushed to London from her home in Mauritius for an operation but the 11 hour flight proved too much for the 69-year old business tycoon who died on 14th March, just hours before she was scheduled to go into surgery.

When she was born way back in 1935 in East London in a large and noisily extended Jewish family, little did the family know the success that would be awaiting little Janet. After her parents moved to Reading in Berkshire, Janet left home to study underwear design at Leicester College of Arts and Technology. Her final year presentation was a coordinated bra, knickers and suspender belt set?

But the stars did not always smile on this tenacious lady. Disillusioned by a dismal late-50s London, she moved to Israel where she met German-born husband Peter Reger. They married and moved to Zurich where Janet started a lingerie business from home. The couple moved to London a few years later and decided to specialize in expensive lingerie. Only to be told by every manufacturer that there was ?no way British women will buy things like this?. Reger paid no heed. And celebrities like Bianca Jagger, Angie Bowie, Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner and Princess Anne, to name a few, are sure glad she didn?t.

Janet Reger?s business snowballed with shops in Bond Street and Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge. The play ?Night and Day? (1978) made her immortal with the line ?Don?t get your Janet Regers in a twist? and Joan Collins paid tribute to her creativity and artistic sense when Reger underwear was her chief adornment in a scene on a swing in the film of sister Jackie?s novel The Stud.

In 1983, however, overreaching expansion plans, recession and the launch of lycra all conspired to bring her down and the company closed with debts of £1 million. But Reger wasn?t done.

After her husband Peter?s suicide, Janet bought back her name in 1986 and rebuilt her business, which her daughter Aliza has helped run since 1998 when the company was turning over almost £5 million a year. That?s where Mauritius comes in the picture. After a breast cancer scare in 1991, Janet started to withdraw from business and decided to move to the island where her products were being manufactured.

The woman is gone but her legacy remains. And the lesson learnt and almost taken for granted: lingerie has to be sexy!