Christie Loran was getting ready to give a makeover to an audience member of the Tyra Banks Show, and the cameras were about to roll. The fashion icon was waiting outside, and Loran was nervous.

So she prayed. Please, don't let her mess this up. "I said, "Oh my God, please let me get through this,' " Loran said.

Loran owns Fashion Fix, a mobile clothing store that makes its base in Wall. Her journey from a teenager whose scoliosis prevented her from wearing anything remotely fashionable to giving fashion advice on a super model's television show has been long.

But it is paying off. Operating out of a 2008 Dodge Sprinter, Loran makes house calls and consults women and men who don't have time to shop for clothes. Loran has three part-time assistants. She declined to disclose her annual revenue, but she said the company has grown 25 percent this year.

Among her clients is Marni Keezer, an Ocean Township resident who has three children, 12 and younger, and an event-planning and gift business. Pressed for time, she calls on Loran a couple of times a month. "It's incredibly convenient," Keezer said. "She has beautiful things. She is the most honest person in the fashion industry I have met."

Loran, 40, lives with her husband, Sonny, and son, Mason, who is 6. She sells apparel on her Web site, www.fashionfixnj.com, and she travels throughout New Jersey and New York City, turning her van into a boutique and selling clothes that would be appropriate for anything from a barbecue to a black-tie dinner. It seems an awfully long way to go to sell clothes, until you hear this story: Loran was 12 years old and growing up in Middletown, when she was diagnosed with scoliosis, a medical condition in which her spine eventually curved to a 65-degree angle.

She was fitted with a steel body brace that she wore virtually around the clock and tried to conceal by wearing baggy clothes. After school, she returned home, privately tried on clothes and wondered what life would be like if she could live without the brace. "I could wear clothes, like everybody else," she said.

At 19, she decided to take a risk. She underwent a 6-hour surgery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital to straighten her spine. Doctors implanted two titanium steel rods from her neck to her waist. She said the pain was excruciating, but the brace was gone. She was given a list of things she couldn't do -- horseback ride, rollerblade, play tennis, and so on -- that she promptly disregarded, returning to the gym three weeks after surgery. "I really conquered things I was told I wouldn't be able to do," Loran said. "My mentality is, if you tell me I can't do it, then I'll be sure I can do it."

By then, she was hooked on the fashion industry. She got her first job when she was 15, selling clothes at Kinkel's department store in Tinton Falls, where she saw the business wasn't only glamorous; she remembers not-so-fondly being ordered to reach through the dirt of a vacuum bag to fish out a hanger she had accidentally vacuumed. She decided she needed to own her own store. She got an associate's degree in fashion merchandising from Brookdale Community College in Middletown. At 26, she was hired as an account executive for Calvin Klein and traveled to retailers nationwide. At 29, she took the money she had saved since she started working and opened Pret a Porter, a women's boutique in Ocean Township.

Loran achieved her goal. But after working upwards of 60 hours a week for nine years, with a young son and a second home in Florida, she decided she needed a more flexible lifestyle. She sold the business in 2007 and decided that what had amounted to a side business -- working as a stylist at private homes -- had potential. Now she works when she is needed, making home visits for free and charging extra for services such as personal shopping.

The idea attracted attention; she is being considered for a reality television show that would give disadvantaged children fashion advice, building their self esteem.

Although confidence only can carry you so far. Last August, Loran drove her van to Tyra's studio in Manhattan and felt so nervous that she nearly fell apart. Tyra took off her high-heels and stepped into the van. The spotlight was on her. The segment turned out just fine. "Everything just flowed perfectly," she said.

Michael L. Diamond: 732-643-4038 or mdiamond@app.com

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