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 Re(a)d my lips
I have a beauty dilemma. Ripe red ‘Veronica Lake’ lips are officially in this autumn. They’re gorgeously glamorous but my problem is that until now, I’ve been a cowardly clear gloss kinda girl. Determind to tap into this ladylike trend, I’ve started wearing richly pigmented balms (the softest way to wear bold lips) and will slowly work my way up to sheer, then matte, lipsticks - going brighter as I get bolder. Come Christmas, I hope to be sporting a proper scarlet pout. Maybe. Kim Parker
Red alert
Super-wearable balms: Laura Mercier Lip Stain in Mulberry and Scarlet, £16 each (lauramercier.com)For ‘kissed-off’ colour: Revlon Just Bitten Lip Stain in Cherry Tart, £10 (boots.com)
Sheerest lip tints: Clinique Almost Lipstick, £12 (clinique.co.uk)
The ultimate red: Poppy King Lipstick Queen Red Sinner Lipstick, £15 (spacenk.co.uk)
Instant karma
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her green lap
Immense
Her brown embrace
Eternal
Her blue body
Everything
we know
‘We Have a Beautiful Mother’ (1991) by Alice Walker (1944-)
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In Town Last Night
The glitziest events
Glossy holiday mag Conde Nast Traveller threw a 10th anniversary party last night in the magnificent surroundings of Durbar Court in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. More party pictures 
Good news London Fashion Week isn’t just for fashion’s in-crowd. Book tickets to the London Fashion Weekend, September 26-30, at the Natural History Museum, and you’ll find huge discounts on over 150 designers. (Book online at seetickets.com or call 0870 890 0097).
Bad news No sooner do you get the hang of Facebook, with a view to getting invited to cool parties etc etc, than researchers at Sheffield Hallam University discover that people who use networking sites have exactly the same number of close friends as people who don’t: ie a somewhat measly five
The Big Issue: once more into the breach for Ulrika
Loveable carcrash Ulrika Jonsson, 40, is getting married again, for the third time, to 39-year-old Brian Monet. I really hope it works out for her - there’s something about Ulrika that women like. Maybe it’s how messed up she is; maybe it’s because she obviously loves her kids; maybe it’s her habit of flashing her bum at photographers. However I fear UJ may be one of those unfortunate woman who is great at getting proposals, but terrible at being married. If women could bottle what makes men propose we’d probably rule the world; one thing’s for sure, it’s got almost nothing
to do with looks, intelligence or personality, if the girls I know who notched up proposals by the handful in their twenties are anything to go by. I can only assume they possessed some unique quality of marriageability invisible to the naked female eye. UJ must have that in spades - she’s done it twice already after all - but it’s the follow through that’s the worry. Maybe she gets her roles muddled up and does whore in the kitchen, chef in the bedroom and maid with the bloke next door. Who knows? But I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for her...
Laura Tennant
Bonkers health You’ve heard of being a functioning alcoholic; well now you can be a ‘functioning anorexic’ too, which means that you worry constantly about food without necessarily being scarily thin, garnering all of the angst and none of the sympathy.
Street Seen
Big bold prints
Thinking of investing in some hard-core accessories for the season ahead? Take your pick from fetishistic ‘shooboots’, structured handbags, ladylike hats, waist-cinching belts and a palette of mustard, bottle green, purple and eye-popping neons.
elleuk.com
Going out? The Place
Shipp’s Tearooms
4 Park St
SE1
020 7407 2692
It’s official: summer is over. Time to breathe a sigh of relief, conceal our not-so-perfect bikini bodies beneath cosy layers and swap carrot sticks for more satisfying snacks. Celebrate the end of months of abstinence (or at least anxiety) by indulging in the latest foodie fad for afternoon tea. Located in bustling Borough market, Shipps has all the charm of a traditional tearoom. There’s the quirky, Women’s Institute decor, the perfectly fluffy scones, the devilishly moist cakes and, most crucially, the impressive selection of infusions. Assam tops the bestseller list but there’s a good selection of detoxifying herb and green teas to keep fashionistas happy. All of which makes it the perfect place for a prolonged, tea-fuelled gossip.
Gabrielle Strachan
Read Me
American academic Laura Kipnis’s The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability (Serpent’s Tail, £8.99) rests on a provocative premise: that femininity and feminism are fundamentally incompatible. Kipnis defines femininity as ‘tactical: a way of securing resources and positioning women as advantageously as possible on an uneven playing field, given the historical inequalities and anatomical disparities that make up the wonderful female condition’. Femininity does whatever it takes to form ‘strategic alliances with men’. The trouble is, that’s not very feminist, feminism being all about independence, and not relying on chaps, and so forth. No wonder we feel so uncomfortable all the time. Kipnis’s analysis has the added virtue of being wittily expressed as well as intellectually rigourous. Perhaps the only answer to the conundrum she presents is the traditional female one of being able to change one’s mind very rapidly and more or less constantly - feminist theory, in other words, according to Schrodinger’s cat.
Laura Tennant
This week’s new books 
