Free Vanity by Lucy Lord Page B

She was wearing an original Biba minidress, turquoise tights and purple PVC over-the-knee boots. She looked rather wonderful. ‘Welcome back, doll! Since your show aired on Monday, I’ve quadrupled my takings!’
    â€˜Really?’ Poppy’s delight was genuine. All she had done, after all, was get some cameramen in there, while Sandra had been building up this Aladdin’s cave for the last twenty years or so. ‘Oh, I’m so pleased for you. You deserve it. This place is to die for.’
    The shop’s interior was a fabulous juxtaposition of rock chick and over-the-top girly. The walls were painted a grungy matte black and hung with framed album covers from the sixties and seventies – the Stones, Led Zep, Velvet Underground, New York Dolls. (‘It only goes on the wall if I screwed one of the band,’ Sandra had confided to camera last week, much to the entire production team’s delight.) Mingling with the album covers were beautifully stylized
Vogue
fashion illustrations from the twenties to the fifties.
    The matte-black walls were offset by floorboards painted a glossy white and strewn with thick, fluffy sheepskin rugs. Either side of the shop window, sumptuously thick pale pink velvet curtains pooled luxuriously to the floor. Two ornate antique chandeliers glittered overhead, their light refracted against the black ceiling in ever-changing swirls by the disco glitter-ball rotating slowly over the pale pink painted Louis XVI escritoire that acted as the cash desk. Faux-French armchairs and chaises longues had been upholstered in animal print (leopard, zebra and cow), and the two longest walls were lined with rail upon rail of exquisite vintage clothes, ranging from Victoriana to the nineties – almost a century’s worth.
    Overgrown exotic plants lurked in every corner, except for the one that housed the single, very comfortably sized changing room, curtained off in the same sumptuous pale pink velvet. Inside, a huge Venetian mirror was propped against one black wall and a leopard-print upholstered chaise longue lounged alluringly against the other.
    â€˜Thanks, honey. Ya want some pot?’ Sandra offered Poppy the spliff she held between age-spotted, scarlet-tipped fingers.
    â€˜Thanks, but I think I’ll pass today. I’m on a mission to shop! And not even for myself, which makes it so much better. Guilt free!’
    â€˜I get where you’re coming from, baby doll. But surely you’ll want a couple pieces for yourself too?’ Sandra looked at Poppy in an almost coquettish manner and Poppy laughed.
    â€˜Oh, go on, twist my arm then. Seriously though, I really want to get something nice for my best friend Bella. I put her through hell last year and she didn’t deserve it.’
    Sandra knew better than to enquire further, except to ask about Bella’s size, shape and colouring. She rummaged amongst the rails and after some deliberation emerged with a Halston silk empire-line maxidress, circa 1977. It was a deep emerald green, with jewelled peacock feathers creeping up both the floor-sweeping hem and the thick halterneck ties.
    â€˜Oh, my bloody God, you are a genius, Sandra! Really! I didn’t even tell you that all Bella’s favourite dresses have halternecks! She’s got lovely shoulders. She’ll absolutely love it!’ Poppy flung her arms around Sandra’s neck, and it had the same effect as it always did, on everybody. Sandra would be a little bit in love with Poppy for the rest of her life from now on.
    â€˜Yessssshhhh, that is right, David.’ Lars tried to focus on his new best mate, his blue eyes substantially more glassy than piercing now.
    â€˜Damian.’ Damian tried to pronounce his own name correctly.
    It transpired that Lars had been living in the Big Apple for five years, ever since he’d been headhunted from Merrill Lynch in Stockholm at the age of 29. The previous year, along with about half