A day in the beauty hall

We visit the largest beauty hall in Europe to discover what really makes women shell out hundreds of pounds on cosmetics?

I am skulking around the beauty hall in Selfridges, Oxford Street —the largest in Europe and the store’s busiest department, especially since the recession bit — watching women buy make-up and ­­­cos­metics. They all have the same facial expression: a mix of anticipation and excitement, with something slightly dreamy and glazed about the eyes, as if they have been hypnotised. It’s exactly the look my five-year-old daughter has if she’s ever in an old-fashioned sweet shop, of the kind where the jars of apple bonbons and fizzy cherry-cola bottles reach up to the ceiling. For women aged anywhere between teens and antiquity, the buying of cosmetics is the adult equivalent of buying sweeties, except it doesn’t make you fat, and it promises to make you beautiful.

The women — and what a mix, from ladies in hijabs (famed for their make-up and skincare consumption, according to several sales assistants I speak to; if your face is the only bit of you showing, you make damn sure it looks its best) to skinny teenagers in shrunken leather jackets — vary in their approach. You can tell the ones who have dashed in from work, because they make a beeline for X counter and know exactly what they want; this also applies to women with small children in tow. For others, though, shopping for cosmetics is a more languid experience: they waft from counter to counter, looking for the elusive one, for the potion, or the lotion, or the cream, or the lipstick, that’s finally going to allow them to flower, to be the spectacularly groomed, superhot person they always knew they were on the inside. I talk to some of them, and they all say more or less the same thing: they’re buying the stuff for themselves, because it makes them feel good, because it’s a treat, “because I’m broke, but my nails are by Chanel”, because it’s a form of therapy, because “it’s amazing in here, like a toy shop”.

The sales assistants, whether from out-there brands such as Illamasqua (the counter is manned by freelance make-up artists) or from “yourself, but better” specialists such as Bobbi Brown, agree that the beauty hall is about transformation; several say that it isn’t unusual, when giving makeovers, to have the customer in tears when the “after” is revealed. And then what happens? “They buy everything, including the brushes I’ve used,” says one sales assistant. “Hundreds of pounds’ worth.” As you would, if you went in feeling like a caterpillar and emerged in full butterfly glory — and thank you, Visa.

It’s the same story with skincare, which I find more puzzling. You get instant results with make-up, but skincare involves a certain amount of blind faith: all you see is a jar, and that jar can cost hundreds. But if people can get fanatical about make-up, they’re positively fundamentalist about face creams. For some, the longing for youth — and it’s ironic that words we normally shy away from, such as “plump”, are the very words that make people shell out £400 for a jar of cream — is akin to religion rather than to consumption. Earlier in the week, in Harrods, I asked a lady — a perfectly “ordinary”, middle-aged woman from north London — why she was spending nearly £200 on a jar of SK-II Ultimate Revival Cream. Her friend swore by it, apparently, and the friend was looking very good. Could the friend be looking very good because she was happy, or had just come back from holiday, or was having excellent sex? Or, um, because she had good genes? “Maybe,” she laughed, “but she says it’s this cream.” Did Ms Muswell Hill often spend £200 on a face cream? “I bought Crème de la Mer because of all the hype,” she said (£530 for 250ml; £160 for 60ml). And? “It was great. But you always hope to find something even better, don’t you?” Forgive me for asking, but are you rich? “I’m a teacher,” she said. So that would be a no. “Hey, I know you,” the woman said. “You wrote that book about shopping. You should know why I’m buying the cream.”

Because it’s a present to yourself? Because it’s about you, and the rest of your life feels like it isn’t? Because when you see those ads telling you you’re worth it, you cringe at the naffness while secretly agreeing? Because your life is lacking in luxe, and this cream will fix that? “There you go,” she said. “And if it does actually make me look better, it will be an added bonus.”

We all have, and frequent, an inner space that represents the gap between fantasy and reality. For women who wear make-up, that place, more often than not, is filled with cosmetics. It may be clichéd and sound reductive, but a harassed new mother buying herself a fabulous red lipstick will feel better. If she wears it, she’ll stop feeling like an elephant/scarecrow hybrid for half an hour, and convince herself she’s channelling Parisienne chic. But even if she doesn’t wear it, even if it sits at the bottom of her handbag, tossed among the nappies and the wipes and her keys and a slightly squashed banana, it will remind her of her other life the next time she’s rootling about for a headache pill — the life in which she is glamorous and is the kind of person who wears red lipstick, the life she’s not quite willing to give up on just yet. Even if that life isn’t a life she has ever had, or is ever likely to: that’s not the point. Cosmetics, to bastardise Wilde, represent the triumph of hope over experience.

Back in Selfridges, I have a chat with David Walker-Smith, the store’s director of beauty. He tells me that he brought his mum in to have a makeover at the Armani counter. “In the 1950s, women thought they just looked how they looked. Today, they all believe they could look amazing, if they knew how. And it’s true — they can. We have people here who can teach you the artistry required. I wanted to show my mum a bit of that.” Makeover complete, his mother went home. Her husband was away that night, so she slept in her make-up to show him the next day. I close my notebook: that story tells you everything you need to know about the power of cosmetics.

Except, one last thing: “You’re right to say it’s all about transformation and magic,” Walker-Smith says, “but the other thing is, we now have products that work — products that keep their promises. Things really have evolved. Some of those wonder creams really are wonder creams; they really will make you look better.” Magic meets fact, at long last. I’m supposed to go home, but I spend another hour wandering round the beauty hall, my faith not only intact, but renewed.


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