She's Gotta Have It
Fashion, beauty, shopping, social life and things that make you go hmmm; come scroll with us for the She's Gotta Have It guide to girlitude
Suddenly Single
The adventures of a divorcee-about-town 
Agony Sisters
Advice from the women who know
People
Window Shopping
London’s glitziest shop fronts
Wardrobe Mistress
Hot or Not?
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On Beauty Product detox
When moving house recently, the biggest challenge was my groaning beauty cupboard. Faced with (I kid you not) seven boxes of products (plus one peeved pal who volunteered to help shift things) I jettisoned the underperformers and embraced a sleek new ‘capsule’ collection of essentials that really do the job, plus a dramatically reduced morning routine. Who needs the Lemonade Diet when you can lose half a ton instantly this way? Kim Parker
Face forward
Essential cleanser: REN Mayblossom and Blue Cypress Facial Wash, £16.50 (renskincare.co.uk)Must-have moisturiser: Vaishaly Day Moisturiser SPF 15, £45 (vaishaly.com)
Best body softener: Clarins Moisture Rich Body Lotion, £25 (boots.com)
Can’t live without: Dermalogica Special Clearing Booster, £26.80 (hqhair.com)
Instant karma
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
Gore Vidal (1925-) in the Sunday Times Magazine, 16 September 1973
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In Town Last Night
The glitziest events
Martine McCutcheon, Jasmine Guinness, Caprice were out for fashionable fusion resto Nobu's Eve Appeal dinner to raise money for cancer. More party pictures 
Good news If you’re a fan of cult fashion bible Cheap Date, you’ll be thrilled to discover that author Kira Jolliffe has just launched a wardrobe makeover service which promises to rationalise, edit and fine-tune your clothes (plus she’ll tell you the truth about the jeans that really do make your bum look big). It’s wardrobe therapy at an affordable price to end sartorial stress for ever. Bad news The Journal of Epidemiology has discovered that rock and pop stars are more than twice as likely to die young as the general population
The Big Issue: Why celebs strip but the famous don’t have to
Have you noticed the inverse proportion between fame and nudity? The less famous a celeb, the more likely they are to take their clothes off for Esquire, pose in leather hot pants, or bare their surgically enhanced boobs, which is why you have never heard of any of those weird tarty girls on Celeb Love Island. Or whatever. With any luck the early publicity generated by the exposure propels them up the fame ladder until they go all classy and coy. Remember Kelly Brook’s barely-there dresses? Now she’s a model of chic decorum, with a book out on how to dress (rather than undress). Ditto
Christina Aguilera. Then there are the celebrities who have to go on flashing flesh in order to generate publicity (Paris Hilton, Posh Spice) there being no alternative source of fame on offer, aside from legendary shopping habits. But in the last and saddest category are the celebs, once famous for doing something but now hurtling from grace, who take up slagdom afresh to revive a fading career or perhaps just in sheer, desperate, fameless anomie (Britney Spears, and you too, Sharon Stone). C’mon people, it’s the law of diminishing returns! Move away from the thong and put the clothes back on.
Laura Tennant
Bonkers health Forget the GI diet; the GM diet, or General Motors Diet for Weight Loss, is enjoying stealth success because according to fans it not only promises to shift up to 17lbs a week, but actually works. And yes, it really was developed for employees by the car manufacturer.
Win an organic cookery holiday in Tuscany
Street Seen
Belt up
FASHION SPECIAL
Want to get the heads up on where fashion's heading for autumn/winter 2007? Get the facts on fashion's return to a Forties, feminine silhouette. Waists, heels, grown-up grooming and even fur make a comeback, courtesy of Gucci, Givenchy, Missoni and Dior. elleuk.com
Going out? The Place
24
Kingly Street,
Soho,
London,
W1B 5QP
Fans of drama series 24 may be disappointed to find no trace of dishy special agent Jack Bauer propping up the bar of this glam new club. On the upside, 24 looks set to fill the void left by the closure of A-lister haunt Attica on the same premises. It’s awash with hi-tech touches and is billed as ‘Star Wars and Star Trek all rolled into one’. Gone are the mirrored walls and strip-club decor; instead a new bright white colour scheme boosts the impact of futuristic projections and movie clips that alter when touched. This, along with the cutting-edge music policy and classy cocktail selection, will keep even the most hardened counter-terrorist entertained until the early hours. All that’s missing is a 24-hour licence.
Gabrielle Strachan
Read Me
The eponymous heroine of Remedy (Anne Marsella, Portobello Books, £12.99) is a nice Catholic girl from Florida with an adventurous sexual appetite who works in Paris for A La Mode online. Every lunchtime, while her colleagues hit the gym, she goes to Mass and entreats that day’s saint to send her an agreeable lover. When not lusting after A La Mode’s gay photographer Jean Claudi, or fighting off the attentions of otherwise inappropriate Frenchmen, she reads Balzac, makes much of her cat Jubilee and muses philosophically. Marsella’s writing is arch, literary and occasionally rather too whimsical. But heroines who can do Henry James and Jean-Paul Gaultier are few and far between and should therefore be treasured.
Laura Tennant
This week’s new books 
