By Style15 windows
Brunettes: fifteen companions, set out like a store guide
This is the widest window on the street. Fifteen brunettes, running from the sandy balayage of Vanessa to the near black of Stacy, with chestnut, chocolate and espresso in between. Fifteen portraits is a lot to take in at once, so the window borrows a trick from the department stores, whose guide by the lifts sends you somewhere according to what you came in for rather than the name on the label.
Find the heading that sounds like your evening, read the names beneath it, and open whichever profile catches you.
Brunettes, lit
15 women in the windows fit this description, going by the facts on their profiles. Each pane leads to the full picture.
Bianka
Age 23Knightsbridge
Jasmin
Age 22Soho
Laura
Age 25Paddington
Liana
Age 28Marylebone
Lucy
Age 24Pimlico
Margo
Age 31Knightsbridge
Michelle
Age 27Chelsea
Molly
Age 24Soho
Rosa
Age 25Marylebone
Samanta
Age 27Mayfair
Sonya
Age 32Knightsbridge
Stacy
Age 22Chelsea
Tiffany
Age 24Soho
Tina
Age 26Covent Garden
Vanessa
Age 25Paddington
Scent, fabric and a good cut
Sonya begins in the fragrance hall at Selfridges, sprays three scents on three paper strips and asks you to pick one before you see a price. She keeps to the hours of five until ten. Tina can judge a jacket from across a room and orders punch for two in a booth at the Punch Room on Berners Street. Tiffany prefers the Long Bar at the Sanderson, where the game is finding three strange details in the lobby before the champagne runs out.
Books and pictures
Vanessa walks you along the oak gallery at Daunt Books, picks a country you have not been to yet and gives you three books about it. Margo goes west of Baker Street to the Lisson Gallery and gives one piece as long as it needs. Michelle picks a single room of the British Museum on a late opening night, then explains every object you lingered over.
The food hall
Bianka takes a corner table at Norma on Charlotte Street and chooses the pasta you would have skipped. Liana favours Le Relais de Venise, where the single decision of the night is how you like your steak. Rosa starts at a cheese counter's long shared table and lets the afternoon drift into supper.
Music and late hours
Samanta chooses the concert at the Royal Academy of Music, across the road from the park, and follows it with a martini cold enough to sting. Jasmin starts after nine at Artesian in The Langham and chooses your second drink. Molly starts at ten in the fireside armchair at Seymour's Parlour, a few steps from Marble Arch, and Stacy will say yes to a same night request for late comedy at Soho Theatre.
Sending a shortlist instead of one name
With fifteen to choose from, nobody expects a single name. Send Clementine three in order of preference, with the hotel and the time, and she confirms the first of them who is free, telling you which one it is before anybody sets off. If none of the three can make it, she says so plainly and suggests one more from this window.
One price list for all fifteen
Brunette is the most common shade in The Selection, not a premium one, and the price list does not change: £250 buys an hour, £500 buys two, and a four hour dinner comes to £900. When the evening is simply a visit to your room, hotel visits explains how that runs along the street. Several of the fifteen appear in other windows too: Laura, Sonya and Tina in toned and athletic, and Bianka, Michelle, Molly and Rosa in curvaceous.
Light a window
Point to a pane on this page, or describe the look and let the desk suggest a name.