If New York is the city that never sleeps, London has got to be the city that never stops. The streets hum and heave all day everyday, shops and pubs throb from open to close and everyone is always in a desperate rush. It’s frenetic and sometimes plain unfriendly, but all that dashing does mean that girls about London know how to get glam on the go.
Take Topshop. Possibly my favourite place on the planet, you can shop four floors of clothes until you collapse, then have your style advisor finish the job while you recover at the in-store mani or blow-dry bar. Then there are the department stores, where you can not only have your make-up done but get a massage and have your eyebrows threaded at a counter. Yep, you can get Brazilianed, bronzed, and beautified in a heartbeat in good old London, so long as you’ve got the dosh to spare.
Case in point: the posh new loos and powder rooms that have just opened on the Oxford Street shopping strip. More like a parlour than a public pit stop, WC1 (a play on water closet and the postcode) is the perfect comfort break for cashed-up girls on a mission – a pound buys you a visit to a luxury loo or a quick neck massage, but up it to a fiver (around $12) and a professional make-up artist can give you the once over too. There are change rooms to freshen up in before a night out and an emergency stash of products to buy as well. I’d love to see such a modern convenience in Sydney. It sure puts a whole new spin on, ahem, sitting pretty, doesn’t it?
