By Style3 windows
Auburn and red: three companions, three things to choose
Three companions carry the rarest colouring in The Selection. Lea has long auburn waves and hazel eyes. Luna wears the darkest red. Patricia is auburn brown, the quietest shade, and her manner matches it. A window of three can afford to take its time, so each one gets a proper introduction here.
All three share a habit. Within the first hour, each puts a small decision in front of you. It is not a test, simply a better way into conversation than asking what anyone does for a living, and the answer tends to set the tone for everything after it.
Auburn and red, lit
3 women in the windows fit this description, going by the facts on their profiles. Each pane leads to the full picture.
Choose a lamp, with Lea
Lea's afternoon starts at Heal's on Tottenham Court Road, climbs the spiral staircase and stops on the lighting floor, where you are asked which lamp you would carry back to your hotel. She knows interiors, makes her own earrings and will have a view on your choice. An early supper follows and, if you hold seats, the short walk to a theatre. Petite and in her early twenties, she is simplest to book midweek before curtain up; weekends want a few days' warning.
Choose a glass, with Luna
Luna crosses to the Bloomsbury edge of W1 for the Coral Room, where the list leans on English sparkling wine and she is steadily tasting her way through all of it. Two glasses arrive, you name a winner, and she keeps score out of ten in pencil. After that, dinner, then theatre if anything good is running, and a last glass somewhere in W1. Curvy and 171 cm, she works evenings only; tell the desk your hotel early and she will choose the bar.
Choose a painting, with Patricia
Patricia's afternoon is the Wallace Collection on Manchester Square, a townhouse full of old masters, armour and porcelain. She plants you before The Laughing Cavalier and asks what exactly he finds so funny. Tea follows under the glass roof of the courtyard, then Marylebone High Street, one bookshop window at a time. Slim and 172 cm, fond of watercolours and film noir, she likes a quiet evening booked a couple of days out.
Matching the choice to the evening
Lea suits an evening with a curtain in it. Luna suits one built around a wine list. Patricia suits one where nobody is in a hurry. All three are booked on the same ladder: two hours at £500 for the lamp, the glass or the painting on its own, four hours at £900 once dinner joins the plan, which is how dinner dates are put together on this site.
A short window, so plan a little
Three names fill up faster than fifteen. For a Friday or a Saturday, write a few days out; midweek, a day usually does it. Lea and Patricia both prefer some notice in any case, and Luna likes to hear the hotel early so she can think about the bar. If the one you wanted is taken, Clementine says so in her first reply and suggests whichever of the other two suits the same plan.
How the colour is kept honest
Hair on a profile is the hair she has now. If Luna goes darker for the winter, her profile changes that week and so does this window. The same goes for the neighbouring windows in the hair group, brunettes and raven haired. Lea also stands in petite, Luna in curvaceous, and Patricia among the statuesque and the slim.
Light a window
Point to a pane on this page, or describe the look and let the desk suggest a name.