Jane Shepherdson meets nemesis again

One woman in particular will not be thrilled to hear that the rag-trade tycoon Sir Philip Green is trying to purchase the Icelandic Baugur Group which owns many of the British high street's best known chain stores, including Principles, Oasis, Warehouse, Karen Millen – and Whistles. She is Jane Shepherdson who left Green's retail empire in 2006 in what was one of the more acrimonious fashion divorces of recent times.

Shepherdson was creative director of - and, most in the retail trade would agree, the real brains behind - Topshop. She left after Green made the decision to award his friend Kate Moss a £3m contract to design a range of clothes for Topshop without consulting her. The trouble is, Shepherdson ended up buying a stake in Whistles in partnership with Baugur. She is the CEO of Whistles and director of women's wear.

Quite what will happen to Shepherdson if Green pulls off the Baugur deal can only be speculated on. They certainly didn't part on the friendliest of terms when she quit Topshop and in so doing relinquished the honorific title of "most influential woman in British fashion". Matters were made worse, one suspects, when she took some of Green's top talent with her, among them Keith Wilks and Jo Farrelly, who become finance and marketing directors of her new company.

At the time, Green said of Shepherdson's Whistles deal: "All I would say is that this will be the test of whether she can or can't develop a business. It's a tough market. If I'd been her, I wouldn't have done all this publicity until I'd got my feet under the desk. I'd have looked first and asked: can I deliver?" Doesn't sound promising.