As Patti Lawrence (her modelling name), Patience Bradley lived the really high life in Sixties London. But these days, having married an Ulsterman and moved to Co Down, she is using her abundant skills to help organisations as varied as the Disabled Riding Association and the Raynaud's and Scleroderma Society (of which she's president).

It's fitting that Patience works for the RSS, as she is one of the small number of sufferers in the UK. And now, as so often with people who have a rare condition, something of an expert.

"Raynaud's is a connective tissue disorder, affecting the hands, feet, nose and ears," she says. "It's particularly uncomfortable from October to March, when the weather is cold, but is not a killer disease."

Whereas scleroderma, which she has alongside secondary Raynaud's, can be - and Patience has in the past been in comas lasting several hours.

"The term means hardening of the skin, and it can affect your internal organs as well as your mouth, which starts shrinking," she explains.

As Patience, a good-looking woman of 45, points out, this doesn't just hamper eating and going to the dentist, it can affect your looks. ("A woman of 30 ends up looking like a woman of 60.")

Last year, Patience had a laser operation performed by Dr Handley of the Bloomfield Laser Clinic in Belfast, which has stretched her mouth.

"I looked absolutely ghastly at the time," she says. "But it was worth it."

Charity

She has cleverly managed to link her interests and puts on fashion shows, involving able-bodied and disabled people and also dogs, to raise cash for her chosen causes. Over the last 10 years, she's made about £250,000 for charity.

Recently, she was at London Fashion Week, with her four-year-old long-haired chihuahua and supermodel Mary Rose, putting on "a side show" at the Kensington Palace Hotel. As she says, a dog will always tell you if it doesn't want to be kitted out, and Mary Rose is a born model who, she says " almost dresses herself - she puts her hands out ready". Patience adds: " We had a T-shaped stage and she walked to all the points, then came back up and turned, just like a professional. She's amazing."

For the event, Mary Rose was modelling a pink outfit - "like a dress with a beaded collar which hung down and moved when she did" - plus matching pink beaded headdress which elegantly stretched round the back of her neck.

The Dog-O-Glam website run by Patience also contains striking images of dogs in wedding outfits. She explains: "I did this because I started Wheelyglam with wedding dresses. And the dog dressing is really taking off now, it's surreal. A friend of mine was 'bridesmaid' at a promotional dog wedding at Harrod's recently."

Being in London always brings back memories of Patience's modelling heyday. " What's my fondest memory? Well, one vivid memory is of being insulted by Oliver Reed."

Patience, a mere 13 when she started, and newly up from Cornwall, was invited to Mr Reed's Surrey mansion.

She recalls: "I was in awe, as he was my first really famous person. It was a huge house, with electronic gates and we were driven up to the front door."

Patience had dressed carefully for the occasion and had on her best rabbit fur coat from C&A, costing £25. "He looked at me, a teenager new to all this, and said, 'Do you often wear dead rats?'"

It got worse. Patience, desperate to make conversation, asked the actor whether he liked horses, as she'd read somewhere he was a good rider. Unfortunately, an intruder had recently knifed one of his pregnant mares, so he boomed: "Don't you ever dare mention horses to me ... "

The anecdote has a happy ending, however - Oliver Reed, drunk as a skunk at some TV awards a year or so later, came up to Patience, now a star in her own right, and said he owed her an apology.

"My mum was watching on TV," she says. "I remember by then I was very conceited and considered myself above him.

"I must have been the most horrid 15-year-old, always expecting to be lifted and laid. I never carried my own luggage.

"And even at the height of the Troubles, I never queued for anything and was always brought out to the plane quickly."

Patience's main interest is providing fashion for women confined to wheelchairs, via a concern called Wheelyglam. She didn't initially relish working with disabled people, having been used to a world that rated physical perfection above everything.

"I was never good with disability," she continues, "but when I was training my fellow-students at Queen's University, Belfast (where I did an honours course in psychotherapy) in modelling, a guy on crutches wanted to get involved."

Disabled

That indirectly led to Patience's involvement in Camphill, a home for severely disabled children outside Holywood.

"I asked the director to give me the opportunity to put on a show, and he was reluctant but eventually gave in."

As she says, the models were stars, and remembers in particular "a little blind girl of seven who is also deaf and disabled, but she was terrific".

One problem Patience and her models encountered was the unsuitability of glamorous dresses for wheelchair- users.

She adds: "I put a model in a bridal dress and the material got caught on the wheels."

And so Wheelyglam was born in 2001, with the aim of solving this problem and helping women in wheelchairs to look superb for their weddings or dinners out.

"Wheelchairs are not in my life, I was always taxi, taxi, taxi," says Patience, "but I am proud to be the first person in the world to design, make and show a range of glamorous clothes for wheelchair users."

The wedding dresses are designed to flow over the wheels and still look gorgeous. Patience received a Woman of the Year award for this work.

Does Patience have any regrets at leaving the London scene behind? She now lives in Holywood with Northern Irish husband Ivor, who is 29 years her senior.

"Not really," she says. "Although I regret not having an agent all those years ago. I'd get a phone call on Monday, offering me £300 for a job on the Friday, when I should really have got £3,000."

She loves the adrenalin involved in events organisation. "I thrive on uncertainty, but my husband lives by certainty, with his lunch at 11.45am, tea at a certain time, yet we have the most amicable marriage."

Now Patience Bradley has come full circle with her slightly different fashion shows. "I don't just put on a boring show, but I'll do a bit of fashion, then bring on a singer or dancer, or do an item on colour co-ordination - and when we feature the dogs, they wear the same as the girls, which is great.

"You'll have a model in hat and sunglasses, and a dog in a hat and sunglasses. They look superb."

Unsurprising, really, since one of the dog couture outfits Patience used recently, in soft suede studded with diamonds, cost a cool £3,500. Woof!

Wheelyglam/Dog-o-Glam - Tel: 9059 2370