Susannah Murray recently had to move house. Not because she and her boyfriend were upsizing or even because they fancied a change. No, the reason they were forced to relocate was because there wasn’t enough room for her eight wardrobes.
“I have two wardrobes for dresses, jumpsuits, shoes and boots, two for jeans, pants and jodhpurs, another two for tops, blouses and cardigans, and a final two for trenches, coats and furs” says the 32 year old, smiling through perfectly glossed lips. “Oh, and I do have extra drawers and shelves for underwear, T-shirts and socks.”
With her luminous cheekbones, immaculate magenta shift dress and the sort of posture only delivered by deportment classes, Murray, a fashion writer and blogger, belongs to that rare and delicately perfumed breed of women who never dress down.
While the rest of us slap on a bit of tinted sunscreen and flop down to the beach in our Havaianas, these women go to great lengths to look glam 24/7, wearing makeup to bed, sacrificing their feet in 10cm heels, shelling out hundreds of dollars on hair extensions and repainting their nails several times a week. Or in Murray’s case, several times a night.
“Im a bit obsessive about my nails,” she laughs. “They’re really irritating me today, because Ive painted them with a white Chanel polish, but Im wearing black and gold. I cant wait to get home and repaint them.”
She recently went to an important meeting and chipped a nial as she was stepping out of the taxi. “I was beside myself. All through the meeting, I gesticulated and picked up my glass of water with my other hand.”
Yet far from being annoying or self-obsessed, Murray’s evident pleasure in dressing up and looking her best is rather infectious. She admits some elements of her routine are borderline ridiculous, from taking two hours to get ready, to wearing makeup to the gym and matching her sport socks to her training outfits.
“I’d never risk being caught without makeup,” she says. “Yes, Im sure it may seem a bit vain, but Im not forcing this on anyone else. I can laugh at myself and Im not hurting anyone.”
Having appeared in Big Brother in 2007, where her fastidious grooming was a source of amusement among housemates, Murray subsequently moved from Brisbane to Melbourne because of the fashion.
Rather than envying Murray, friends see her as a constant source of styling advice. But what about the men in her life? Surely all this primping and preening must have ruined the odd romance or two? “It never cost me a boyfriend but I can guarantee its gained me a few,” she says. “My boyfriend, Thomas, doesn’t mind at all. “If any guy thinks he can come between me and my fashion, its all over.”
In fact, far from ditching a high-maintenance partner, it seems certain men find this attention to glamour and grooming alluring. David Beckham has spent 13 years with a perma-tanned wife whose feet constantly teeter in sky-high stilettos and whose carb-starved body is zipped into figure-hugging frocks of her own design. Actor Liz Hurley, who says she always wears makeup because she “doesn’t see the point of looking less than your best,” appears happily married, while 77 year old Joan Collins has no shortage of (younger) husbands trailing in her polished and fragrant wake.
pictures courtesy of Sunday Magazine
