My glamorous friend Jibby Beane, who has died aged 84, was known in London’s fashion and art worlds as an energetic and unique figure. Blessed with fabulous blond good looks, during the 1990s she appeared on the catwalk for Vivienne Westwood, was featured in countless style magazines and ran an art gallery from her first-floor flat in Paddington, central London. The artist Martin Creed first showed his work there in 1994; he won the Turner prize seven years later.
Wherever Jibby arrived, laced into a Westwood corset and tottering on platform shoes, everyone knew who she was. She had started modelling in the 60s and appeared in the first Andrex television commercial to feature a labrador retriever puppy in 1972. She had also worked for the couturier Victor Stiebel. In 1963 she married Kenneth Beane, whom she had known since childhood.
