SHE was as flamboyant in death as she was in her life.

Crowds of curious tourists lined the sunlit streets as a magnificent horse-drawn hearse carried the body of leading York retailer and fashion trailblazer Victoria Bage through the city centre.

The funeral procession, involving many scores of mourners, began yesterday afternoon after a service at a packed St Olave's Church, Marygate.

After passing through Bootham Bar and along High Petergate, it then halted outside Sarah Coggles, her fashion store in Low Petergate, which had closed for two hours as a mark of respect.

Then it moved on to Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, where she had owned a shop earlier in her career.

Victoria chaired the Sarah Coggles fashion chain and also had the franchise for a number of French Connection UK outlets, and the fashion and retail worlds had been shocked last week by her sudden death through natural causes.

Leading business figures joined family and friends for the funeral and procession.

Both were led by an Orthodox Bishop, who said he had known Victoria for a long time and had many things in common.

In a moving and sometimes amusing address, Bishop Stephen said Victoria had been a "unique and exceptional woman," who even in her early days had shown a certain eccentricity.

"She had vigour, determination, courage and a great sense of fun," he said.

Bishop Stephen said everyone would miss Victoria, "some with real sorrow, some with relief."

He said she had had a reputation for hardness. When he had told a friend that she had had a heart bypass operation, they had said: "How can you have a bypass for something that isn't there?"

"But she did have a heart. She didn't want to allow people to see it, but it was there." He said Victoria had loved people, and wanted to find out what made them tick. He spoke of the way Victoria had started her fashion business with a stall in York market in the 1970s and taken it through rapid expansion.

Then he shocked mourners by saying she had left a business disaster behind her. As the congregation braced itself for his next words, he then quipped that both Benson & Hedges and Wine Rack were about to declare themselves bankrupt!

Updated: 10:15 Thursday, April 17, 2003