I turn into a different (possibly better) person when I’m overseas

Packing my toiletry bag for a recent overseas trip, I added an item rarely used at home. Dental floss and I aren’t best friends (as my dentist can attest). I always promise her I’ll take up the flossing habit but don’t – until I’m in a luxury hotel room peering at myself in the gleaming bathroom mirror. Then I’m flossing those chompers as if it’s always part of my routine.

Credit: Jamie Brown

This behavioural quirk is hard even for me to understand – but something comes over me when I’m heading off on a trip. It’s as though I’ve suddenly been given a chance to be a better version of me. I ratchet up more time on personal grooming, I don’t even dream of leaving the breakfast buffet without partaking of all five food groups and put more effort into my wardrobe choices, mixing and matching colour and texture as though I’m costume designer Catherine Martin putting in a day’s work on Moulin Rouge!

Lately, I’ve also realised that you can take that “being a better version” concept to a whole new level and become someone else entirely, even if only for a few hours or days. Earlier this year, I channelled Jennifer Coolidge – specifically, the actress’s fictional character of Tanya McQuoid-Hunt in season two of the HBO hit series The White Lotus.

Tanya, a needy, self-obsessed heiress, is one of the most memorable characters in the show’s first season that’s set on the Hawaiian island of Maui. She’s such a hit that she returns for the Sicilian-set season two. So what encouraged me to channel Tanya’s main-character energy? Well, it wasn’t much of a leap of imagination. I was heading to San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel. This clifftop landmark not only inspired White Lotus creator Mike White, who wrote the show’s second series while in residence, but forms the backdrop (some might say it’s a minor member of the ensemble cast) of the entire season.

Countless fash-mag column inches have been devoted to Coolidge’s memorable Tanya looks. They include a trunk full of Dolce & Gabbana (think wisteria-adorned day dresses through to a coral-pink, multi-toned tulle wrap dress) and a fairyfloss-pink Valentino chain bag. I don’t have the budget for snapping up any haute couture, but I do have an eye for spotting a slinky frock that would look right at home in the corridors of a historic convent turned luxury crash pad.

Jennifer Coolidge (left) in The White Lotus.Credit: HBO/Binge

My floor-length dress is widow-black – the very opposite of Coolidge’s tutti-frutti palette – but dramatically twists and knots at the navel. It cost me only $US10 ($14.90) at an op shop in Springfield, Missouri – a fact that gives me enormous pleasure as I parade it everywhere from my poolside deckchair (with a view of a smoking Mount Etna) to dining at the hotel’s Michelin-star restaurant. No one bats an eye, even when I pair it with white sneakers (I travel carry-on-only, which limits footwear choices).

In the show, Tanya is also inspired to channel a glamorous other. Her super-specific fantasy about a perfect day out in Italy involves pottering around on the back of a Vespa making like she’s the 1960s Italian screen legend Monica Vitti. Thus, we see Tanya puffing on a Euro-slim cigarette, accessorising with oversized sunglasses, a dangerously flowy scarf and high heels, and posing for a snap beside the Vespa in the hotel courtyard.

You might think you know where this is going, but White gives his plot as many hairpin turns as those roads connecting Taormina’s clifftop to the nearest beach. All I can say is that (spoiler alert) unlike Tanya, I live to floss another day.