Tanya Sarne

Tanya Sarne was born to Romanian parents Jean-Claude (born 1920) and Daphne (born 1921), who both lived in London and met in an air raid shelter in Kensington Gardens in 1943. Her mother had studied at the London School of Economics and worked at BBC Overseas Service until 1952. Her father was employed at Reuters.

Sarne left school in 1963 and during a gap year busked with Andrew Loog Oldham, had an affair with Tony Booth, worked as a model for the Cherry Marshall agency (featuring in the Pathé film short Model School in Mayfair) and worked on the London party scene which brought her into the orbit of Michael Caine, Terence Stamp and Peter O’Toole.

She studied history and social psychology at the University of Sussex, Brighton (1964-1967). Her contemporaries included Virginia Wade. Sarne then went on to become a reader for Universal Pictures and briefly worked as an assistant to a literary agent.

In 1967, Sarne met her future husband Mike Sarne - formerly a pop star, and by now a film director. After their wedding in London on 15 January 1969, preparatory work on Myra Breckinridge took them to California. The Sarnes, having declined to stay as guests at the home of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, relocated to the nearby Malibu Colony. Fortuitously, this prevented them becoming embroiled in the Tate–LaBianca murders of August 1969 although Polanski, on his return to Los Angeles, grieved at the Sarnes’ home for several days.

The early 1970s took Sarne to Brazil, where she first became interested in developing affordable fashion. This was driven also by visits to Paris and New York trade fairs in the mid-1970s, and a very successful period selling alpaca jumpers from Peru. By 1978, she had co-created a UK-based range of fashion sportswear under the trade name Miz. The lines expanded to include trousers, scarf coats and jackets over the next five years. Sarne sold her share of the company in 1983.

Sarne's first marriage, to Mike Sarne, broke down in the late 1970s. They did not formally divorce until 1986, by which time they had been separated for seven years.

Sarne has five grandchildren.

Andrew McGibbon, a musician, and later comedy writer and documentary maker, met Sarne in 1991 and bought the flat above her so they could create a home in 1995. They were engaged in 2005. The wedding was on 9 January 2015.

In 2023, she publisher her memoir Free Spirit.