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Fashion designer Charlie Brown is to
undergo brain surgery on Tuesday following the detection
of a small growth.
Surgeons recently discovered a cyst on
her brain after Brown, one of the Australian fashion industry's
most high-profile businesswomen, started complaining of
headaches and general lethargy.
Her family declined to comment when contacted
on Friday.
Husband and business partner Danny Avidan
said: "Please understand, we are relieved by the
news that it is not cancer, but we don't wish to discuss
it further."
He declined to say which surgeon would
be operating on his wife or at which hospital.
The dynamo behind brands Charlie Brown,
lili and Princess Charlotte recently had a biopsy, which
revealed the growth to be benign.
Brown's appearance at Mercedes Australian
Fashion Week in May prompted talk that she may have been
working too hard in the weeks preceding the event.
She appeared pale and close friends have
since revealed she was suffering from exhaustion.
"She has been unable to shake the
feeling of tiredness and has been feeling chronically
unwell," one friend said.
It transpires that the designer has
been nursing a nagging shoulder injury - "a cracked
shoulder" for several months - and was struggling
with the injury throughout Fashion Week. The injury prompted
her to seek further professional advice and undergo a
series of scans, one of which revealed the cyst on her
brain.
Brown, a mother of three who converted
to Judaism when she married, was relieved to have at last
been given a positive diagnosis and was spending this
weekend "observing the Sabbath, drawing strength
from her family and praying for a successful outcome on
Tuesday", a source close to her said.
"She is in the best of hands and
has only her post-operative recovery to be focused on,"
the source said.
Brown had enjoyed a bumper year leading
up to Fashion Week, where she once again won the battle
for media exposure by featuring British fashion icon Jade
Jagger on the catwalk.
Brown and Avidan recently opened a new
boutique in Melbourne's thriving Chadstone and are poised
to open her second boutique in central Melbourne.
Sources in Avidan's Discovery Group said
the Charlie Brown label was set to announce sales of $20
million this year, a record for the label that was on
the brink of liquidation only a few years ago.
Last week, Brown's husband confiscated
her mobile phone and she was banned from her office to
keep her from working and to encourage her to prepare
for the surgery.
Friends said that, if it weren't for
Brown's characteristic perseverance, the cyst would not
have been detected and she'd still be unaware of its presence.
"She was determined to discover
the root of her health problems so just kept having scans
until she finally got the news," one said.
If all goes well, Brown will take a month
off to recover before returning to work.
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