(FORTUNE Magazine) – When Bill and Hillary Clinton visited London last summer, Prime Minister Tony Blair knew just the place to take them for dinner: Le Pont de la Tour, Sir Terence Conran's spectacular restaurant on the Thames. When French President Jacques Chirac came to town in November, Blair put Conran on display again--as designer of the meeting rooms used for the Anglo-French summit.

If there is one figure who is pivotal to Blair's "rebranding of Britain" as a more youthful, more democratic, more stylish place, it is Conran. For a 66-year-old who is more autocrat than democrat, that's a remarkable achievement. Throw in Sir Terence's previous go-round as a generational icon (in the swinging London of the 1960s), his stint as a retailing magnate in the 1970s and early 1980s, his fall from power in the late 1980s--and while we're at it, the sensational $17 million settlement a divorce court awarded his (third) ex-wife last year--and you have one of the more colorful business tales of our time.

Now Conran is working on a new chapter: the conquest of New York City. Work is under way to convert the space under the 59th Street bridge in Manhattan into Bridgemarket, a sort of Conran-themed mall. There will be a version (albeit under another name) of the Conran Shop, Sir Terence's upmarket furniture chain, plus a Conran cafe, a brasserie, and an upscale restaurant. The opening is scheduled for spring 1999. The underside of a bridge may seem an unlikely home for such attractions, but in Conran's eyes it's "rather like the Chartres cathedral, a spectacular space." His judgment in such matters is usually pretty good: In London he converted Butlers Wharf, an area of crumbling Victorian warehouses, into a yuppie paradise that now houses a thriving assortment of restaurants, shops, apartments, and offices.

Not that Conran is always right. His previous foray into the U.S. market, the Conran's stores, cut a retailing swath across the 1970s by selling stylish, simple furniture and housewares at moderate prices. But Conran's failed to keep up with the times and went under in 1994. Bring this up with Sir Terence, and he gets a little snappy. "It didn't go down while I was there," he says. "It went down because Mr. Traub bought it." Retorts Marvin Traub, the former Bloomingdale's chief who took over Conran's in 1992: "What we did was try to turn around a ship that was rapidly going down."

The demise of Conran's was part of a general meltdown of the empire Sir Terence (he was knighted in 1983) began building in the early 1960s. In 1964 the young furniture designer opened the first of his Habitat stores, which brought the clean lines of Scandinavian design to middle-class Britain and became a benchmark of the country's Swinging '60s. By the late 1980s he had cobbled Habitat and several other chains into a retailing giant, Storehouse, with $2.25 billion in annual revenues and 33,000 employees.

It was too much. "I think Terence has enormous entrepreneurial skill," says Michael Julien, Conran's successor as Storehouse CEO. "But he has a blind spot when it comes to how far a business can be stretched." When Britain went into recession at the end of the '80s, Storehouse profits plummeted, and shareholders grew restless. Conran, whose stake in Storehouse had been severely diluted as the company grew, was forced out in 1990. Storehouse was subsequently dismantled, with the Habitat chain ending up in the hands of Swedish furniture giant Ikea.

At the time, it looked like the sad ending to a brilliant business career. But Conran still had a few small ventures of his own--a single Conran Shop in London, which he bought back from Storehouse, and two restaurants. In a brilliant piece of reinvention, he was poised to reemerge, to preside over the swinging '90s.

When Conran opened Quaglino's in 1993, Londoners knew the recession was over. The new restaurant was expensive, extravagant, and as big as the dining room of an ocean liner, with a gilded staircase and cigarette girls in low-cut black velvet. It is now just one of 11 Conran dining palaces in London. Meanwhile, Conran Shops--which sell pricey furniture and housewares, much of it designed by Sir Terence himself--are now in Paris, Tokyo, Fukuoka (Japan), and Hamburg, with another slated to open in Melbourne this month. And then, of course, New York.

All this growth raises an obvious question: Is Conran about to overextend himself yet again? Sure, there are differences this time around. Conran owns 75% of his company, which has only 1,800 employees and anticipates about $150 million in revenues this year, and he appears to have no merger plans. "He will never build such a big business again," says one associate. But some Conran watchers still worry: "I think the States is a nightmare," says Julien. "The New York shop will be the bridge too far, particularly if the economy turns down." Could be. Whatever happens, we can at least be sure Sir Terence will do it with style.

--Lesley Downer

LESLEY DOWNER is a freelance writer based in London.

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Caroline Bollinger