She loves things to be spectacular but she is not a diva. We are talking about Serena Rees, a successful British businesswoman of Kashmiri Indian descent but more known for being the co-founder of Agent Provocateur.
Agent Provocteur is a lingerie business that sells perfume, shoes as well as underwear.
Tired of seeing women dressed in drab undergarments, Rees came up with an idea to start a lingerie store that was filled with colourful and stylish lingerie. In partnership with her then husband Joseph Corre, in 1994 the two opened Agent Provocateur on Broadwick Street, Soho.
Years ago Serena Rees was quoted in the Guardian as saying: “Nice underwear is the basis of good style. Every woman should wear nice lingerie – you feel your best regardless of what else you're wearing.”
Joseph Corre is the son of Dame Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren.
She left in 2007 to pursue other business interests. Private equity firm 3i acquired the UK lingerie business Agent Provocateur for £60m in 2007.
Serena Rees left London's fashion industry in shock when she left Corre for Paul Simonon, the ex-Clash bassist turned painter, in 2006.
Serena Rees is also the co-founder of Cocomaya chocolate makers. She lives in central London with her daughter, Cora, and partner Simonon. Cora is Serena Rees and Joseph Corre's daughter. The raven-haired 19-year-old Cora Corre is one of London's most-watched celebrity offspring, who made her modelling debut when she was just four.
Forty-eight-year-old Serena Rees,an adopted daughter of Indian parents, also has a secret passion that goes beyond panties and pastries, and that's nothing but buildings and architecture.
For Serena Rees, buying, gutting and renovating properties across London has been an obsession.
After leaving a rented flat off the King's Road, in Chelsea, in the 1980s, she bought her first property in Notting Hill, moving on to projects in St John's Wood and then a pair of huge townhouses in Pimlico. An industrial building in Clerkenwell followed soon. Then it was on to Charterhouse Square, Portland Place, in Marylebone, where she created a lateral home inspired by hotel suites on New York's Upper East Side.
Now, with new businsess projects keeping her busy in New York and around the world, Serena Rees has decided to put her stylish Regent's Park home on the market for £15m.
A report in the Sunday Times quotes her saying: “It's always exciting moving on to the next home.”
