Finding treasure in your inner trash

WALKING in Melbourne one morning last year, I realised I was being stalked. Eventually the woman on my elbow grabbed my sleeve: "I love your coat," she cooed. "Where did you get it?"

Call me shallow but it made my week. When a colleague asked me for the shade of my nail polish the other day, it took all my self-control not to pump the air like a Chelsea player after the penalty shoot-out.

When I was a kid, there was a common theme at home and school - beware the paint job, it's what you have inside that matters. Problem was, no one ever asked after my insides, let alone my nail polish - although that may have been because colouring one's nails was frowned upon by the same people who kept urging me not to judge a book by its cover.

In time, the lack of questions about my Mao shirts and faded jeans told me that not everyone was on the same page on this one. Beyond the nuns wearing acres of black cloth, real life loomed - a world of people with the perfect shimmer in their stockings, who wore covetable coats and eye shadow to die for. Somehow they managed to maintain excellent exteriors without losing their souls.

The nuns have disappeared. So have the guilt trips they imposed on generations of young girls interested in more than clean shoes and clean hair. Banished, along with beige handbags.

These days we're suckers for those pages in the trash mags where judges rate celebrities wearing identical clothes, and declare who got it right and who got it wrong. We're all stylists now, assembling ourselves with the same care that a society of masterchefs applies to "plating up" in the kitchen. We know a nice frock is just a beginning and that even Charlize Theron can undermine a designer dress as easily as you can say red carpet.

Whether any of this is good for our souls is a moot point. Do we need our four-year-olds agonising over the perfect leggings? Was Sister Philomena right after all? Meh. It's true that the future of the planet does not turn on a good pair of boots but there's something rather chummy about women with a common purpose.

Asking someone to share the secrets of her nail varnish may not rate alongside a conversation on the future of Greece, but everyone knows there's nothing quite as life-affirming as a close encounter with someone who is prepared to kill for your overcoat.