Spa Day at The Dorchester

Remember a few seasons ago, I swore to myself I wouldn’t attend fashion week again? I held on to my promise for a couple years and felt great about it. I watched the shows unfolding from afar, listened to my poor exhausted friends as they came home knackered from their 20hour days at the shows, happy with my decision. In my little bubble, there is no such thing as FOMO, you see.

This season, things have been different: a few brands came knocking on my door with exciting projects, all happening during LFW and made me offers I simply couldn’t refuse. Such is the life of a freelancer – it is about saying “YES”. So I did. And on the first day of a new dawn for LFW (it is now taking place in the heart of Soho) I was standing outside interviewing show goers about their style. The following 4 days were dedicated to various other projects that saw me running from show to presentation to event to Robot HQ, juggling clients needs, life admin and my family. I am a bit  a lot of a lone wolf and when I interact with too many people or see too many things in one day, I feel exhausted, so by the end of Day 1 I already wanted to throw in the towel – of course I couldn’t. Fortunately, one of my closest friends, Emily was in the same boat and as we were both feeling fashion weak, we made a pact: the day following the end of LFW, we would stop (collaborate and listen), breathe and treat ourselves to a full day of pure relaxation in one of our favourite and most luxurious places in London: The Dorchester, more specifically the Spa at The Dorchester.

The day started with an indulgent breakfast at The Grill (I hadn’t been since the remodelling) – Eggs Royale for me, waffles for Emily. If you can’t have breakfast in bed in one of their suites, then this is the next best thing. We then made our way down to the ultra-fabulously zen spa for a facial. I opted for the La Prairie Caviar Facial which promises to combat signs of ageing and to illuminate the skin. The shift between sunny countryside living and London air, coupled with a stressful few weeks wrecked havoc on my usually non-problematic skin and I found myself looking a little dull, with darker circles under my eyes and generally a bit grey. I explained all this to my facialist who promptly reassured me: after 60mn in her chair, I would come out brand new…

… And I did! The facial has three steps: cleansing, extraction and hydration – my skin was inspected carefully and then my beauty hero got to work, leaving me with a glow I didn’t know I could have. Me and my glow then proceeded to the Relaxation room where we were reunited with Emily and her glow, ready for a little gossip, magazine catch-up and maybe even a little snooze (did I drool?) before heading back into the real world – where we bumped into Rod Stewart hopping in his car. Maybe it wasn’t that real after all?