After Diana, Janet decides it's time for a clear-out

It is a brave woman who follows the trend started by Diana, Princess of Wales in publicly clearing out her overstuffed wardrobe. Few could have imagined that the next contender in this particularly masochistic style challenge would be Yoof TV guru Janet Street-Porter.

Like Diana, the broadcasting queen and former head of L!ve TV has chosen auction house Christie's to dispose of 65 dresses and suits. They will be sold in South Kensington, as part of its Street Style sales.

Like Diana, Ms Street-Porter's outfits include many high-fashion designer creations, including those by Zandra Rhodes. It is unlikely, however, that Princess Diana shares Ms Street-Porter's fondness for flamboyant designs by Vivienne Westwood, Ossie Clark and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Like Princess Diana, who declined to place her wedding dress under the auctoneer's gavel, Ms Street-Porter will disappoint potential purchasers hoping for any of her four nuptial frocks.

She also stands to raise a tidy sum from the sale. But whereas the Princess raised more than pounds 2m, current estimates for Ms Street Porter's collection are running at around pounds 7,000.

Unlike Diana, Ms Street-Porter's collection will not be sold for charity. A spokesman for Christie's last night stressed: "She's a client and she's selling along with everyone else in the sale. She's not calling it the Janet Street-Porter collection or anything. It's just that she doesn't wish to remain anonymous."

Ms Street-Porter has always been far from anonymous. She is famous for, among other things, her eyecatching and individual style. A long-time friend of Zandra Rhodes, said that the first time she met the designer in 1965, she had been wearing silver clothes and silver hairspray and "looked like a dalek". Ms Rhodes, in comparison, was "the weirdest person there - She had these black and white checks painted above her eyes and her hair was dyed blue-black." It was a friendship made in heaven.

In 1995 the flamboyant executive launched a withering attack on Britain's television executives, accusing them of being an inept band of "M" people - "male, middle-class, middle-aged and mediocre".

Christie's added yesterday that the unconventional president of the Rambler's Association was not selling her clothes, like Diana, to change her image but "because some of them have been in the wardrobe for 10 years". Jojo Moyes