A major surge in Jenks' business since launching her hat label just six years ago has put a serious damper on the posh London girl's living conditions. "Ah well, I really can't complain," she says while surveying her two Jack Russell terriers, Elvis and Pepper, running circles around her assistant Sophie, who is furiously sewing on appliqués to the next fall collection.

After completing a three year apprenticeship with Gilly Forge back in 1996 and creating her very first hat for the mother of friend Jodie Kidd, Jenks' business of one-of-a-kind couture hats for London's social set has blossomed. "I started slowly, by making hats for my mother and all her friends and then things just started growing," she says. For last summer's Royal Ascot festival, Jenks churned out more than 70 handcrafted, glamorous confections as head candy for England's upper crust.

And now a larger group of fashionable types will be able to join Jenks' private clients and friends, including Jay Kay of Jamiroquai, Kylie Minogue, Leah Wood and the Kidd sisters, with the delivery this month of her spring/summer collection to the hip London department store Selfridges.

"I'm so thrilled about Selfridges. They are rocking and this will really help broaden my business," says the milliner with her infectious enthusiasm. All 20 handmade hats - brimming with tropical flowers, dragonflies, crystals and ribbons - are one-of-a-kind Jenks designs taken directly from her couture collection and will retail between 365-800 British pounds.

"She's one to watch," says Anna Berkeley, accessories director for Selfridges, who first came across Jenks' eye-catching designs in a British fashion magazine and now has added the line to Selfridges' impressive stable of milliners, which includes Phillip Treacy and Stephen Jones. "They are very eccentric, very fun, but not too complicated. She's created a special couture product which I think will do very well here."

They've also done well on stage, where her creative and colorful creations have made image statements for both Jamiroquai's Jay Kay and Aussie pop queen Kylie Minogue. "Jay Kay showed up at my apartment one night for a party with some friends and I dragged him down to my studio. We're both such random creatures that from then on, we became great friends," Jenks laughs. And apparently great partners too, since Jenks has created over 40 pieces for the hat-aficionado musician. Minogue's favorite is a blue basket weave hat dusted with red and pink crystals.

If Jenks' hats seem easy to spot, then it's a cinch to locate the designer herself on the streets of London. Her wild mane of blond tufts, recently injected with shots of fuchsia highlights, flies freely from under a small crystal beaded cap, devoid of the color black. "I hate the color black," she winces. In addition to Julien Macdonald and Christian Lacroix, Jenks' favorite designer is her personal couturier, Florinda, to whom she can dictate all of her outlandish requests, including the bright orange Lycra catsuit splattered in hand-painted pink flowers she wore to a friend's Christmas party.

"She's electric and so are her hats," says designer Stephen Fairchild, who used Jenks' splashy designs in his last spring runway collection.

"I'm like a magpie- you know, that bird that is attracted to anything remotely twinkly- I just can't get enough of the sparkle," Jenks says of the curtains of Swarovski crystals on her floor, but don't think this designer can't also take it down a notch. "I want to make women look sexy and beautiful," she says.

Luckily for the milliner, all of London is currently abuzz with hats. "People are wearing them everywhere," says Jenks, whose favorite headgear for the moment is her large Eskimo style, rabbit fur cap topped with a giant pom-pom and two prancing side strings. "Fashion is really stepping up and it's great fun watching people at parties."

Although the market may be fertile, Jenks may be aware but is not put off by her stiff competition. "They are geniuses, truly clever," says Jenks referring to Treacy and Jones. "I'm a girl," she says matter-of-factly, "and they do heady, abstract art which is amazing, but I'm different. I just want to make something girly and beautiful."