If memory serves me correctly, Hank Elliott was a designer that Barbara lured away from Lucinda when she and Lucinda were competing.
Walsh Enterprises was supposed to be a 'caretaker' for the Simply Barbara line when Barbara was in jail but Lucinda had arranged to hold onto Simply Barbara when Barbara went to jail, falsely accused of James Stenbeck's "murder" (Stenbeck, of course, was alive). Lucinda wanted Barbara to work for her while WE held onto control of the company, which Barbara flat-out refused. Furious that she couldn't get her design company back, Barbara started B.R.O.
Lucinda and Co. started to look for new designers and found Hank Elliott and contacted him about an interview. Barbara discovered this and convinced Hank (a big admirer of her work), not to work for Lucinda.
I can remember Barbara having fashion shows with her own Simply Barbara line at the Mona Lisa during the Tad Channing murder mystery in fall 1986. While attending that fashion show, Frannie had a unsettling flashback to a fashion show for Simply Barbara that was held at Caroline's, the place that Doug Cummings owned that was named for his dead wife. Mona Lisa by then was in the same space that had previously been Caroline's, which was early 1986, I think.
Barbara had her own line of clothing at least two years before Hank Elliott came on the scene.