New York Beauty School

In New York recently, in the foyer of the Mercer Hotel while my two year old jumped on the orange leather Van der Roe day beds, I leafed through a biography of Elsa Schiaparelli. When I was a child my mother had a stall selling old clothes (the kind of garments that are now grandly labelled 'vintage') and once she returned from one of her 5am buying trips with an unworn Sciaparelli evening jacket covered in electric blue paillettes. As she laid it out for me in hushed tones, explaining the work that had gone into it and why it was better to prefer Sciapperelli to Chanel, something terrible pretty quickly became apparent- the jacket was lacking an arm. That week many people called round to see the garment, cooing at its cut and colour, fingering its cool blue scales . Speculation was rife as to how it had sustained its injury and when the following week I accompanied my mother to Brick Lane and spied the lustre of blue sequins under a pile of old jumble and tugged at it and unearthed the missing limb, the levels of jubilation that followed were sky high.

Slumped in my chair at the Mercer, with my daughter using the Christian Liagre glass topped wenge stools as stepping stones and John Malkovich chatting decoratively in the background, I read about Schiaperelli's first outing to a maison de couture with a rich American friend who was on a shopping spree in Paris. When Sciaparelli discovered a coat of loose-cut black velvet, lined with bright blue crepe de chine, she could not resist slipping into the garment . When she turned round she saw that the couturier Paul Poiret himself was looking at her, encouragingly.

'I cannot buy it. It is certainly too expensive and where would I wear it?' Schiaparelli said.

'Dont worry about money,' Poiret replied, 'and you could wear anything anywhere.

Is this our ultimate fantasy when we shop? Huge compliments and everything for nothing? That afternoon I braved the New York department stores with this image in mind. In the cosmetics halls I let the trill of beauty banter wash over me, the voices bright and taut as if even they had been subject to cosmetic procedures.

-What people forget is the skin is the only garment you wear seven days a week.

- It's a mix of white florals with a gardenia base with strictly no citrus, so after an hour or two put it this way your'e not going to smell like a lemon.

-This cream will take twenty five years off like THAT.

Immediately I felt myself scrutinised by a hundred eyes, my every garment judged and priced. l flattered myself I was a tricky case because although I Iooked greasy- scruffy I had a good handbag and my daughter was beautifully dressed. I must have been declared attention-worthy because just then a wrinkle free grandma swooped at me from nowhere and grabbed my arm, 'Come- I have the perfect eye cream for you.'

'Ice cream?' my daughter echoed her eyes widening but before I could reply I was whisked off in another direction by a glamorous perfume salesman.

'She's so beautiful' , he whispered, his fingers in mine, as he fought off a rival salesperson who was trying to spray scent on my head 'I can see where she gets her looks.'

'Hey there!' an angular New York maven shouted at me her head emerging from under a counter arrayed with gold bottles, 'Your daughter should be a model. She belongs in Vogue. IN VOGUE.' She reached over and started brushing some gloopy mauve cream onto my arm. 'This IS you', she pronounced. But another saleslady was already leading me back to her counter. The place was Bedlem. There truly would have more respect of persons in a Souk. This woman sat me and Mary down at her counter on high stools and then glanced at my face. Slowly, the corners of her mouth went down. You look so...English, she said with heavy sympathy.

It wasn't meant to be like this I protested inwardly as I paid for my Laura Mercier Lavender and Basil scrub and my Bliss Rosy Toes to keep you rosy when you mosey. But what can you do?