Retail therapy

Smells like money

New Zealand shoppers won't get a sniff of the world's most expensive commercially available bottle of perfume - at 115,000 ($289,017) it's available exclusively in London and New York stores.

The crystal flacon is finished with a five-carat diamond mounted in an 18-carat gold collar. Buyers of the 10 limited edition bottles will have their purchases delivered in a Bentley and served with Harrods' champagne.

British designer Clive Christian created the Imperial Majesty bottle. It comes filled with either Clive Christian No 1 for Men or No 1 for Women fragrances.

Speaking at the bottle's world launch in Harrods, Christian said: "It is one of 10 and it does mark a change in the luxury world in attitudes towards perfume.

"It is like a celebration and we thought Harrods was the best place to do it."

The 500ml perfume is exclusively available at Harrods in London and Bergdorf Goodman, New York. - PA

Couture charity

Karen Walker has designed another T-shirt for the ever-popular Glassons Breast Cancer Research Trust campaign.

But they won't be in Glassons until next year. If you're itching to get in early, Walker's revved up her 2006 design called Trapeze Act, and will be selling a limited edition of 50 of them. The couture version, along with 50 of her original Chrysanthemum design, are in Karen Walker stores for $135. Proceeds go to the trust.

Dark times

Sarah Jessica Parker hardly ever puts a fashionably shod foot wrong. We even forgive her for unleashing the mammoth corsage fad. But the brown hair she sported to the Los Angeles premiere of her new film The Family Stone is simply not right. She's a blonde through and through.

She should get some of that Garnier Nutrisse home colour kit she's always banging on about.

Get the body to come to heel

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has nothing on How to Walk in High Heels by Camilla Morton (Hodder & Stoughton, $49.99).

This really is the modern girl's guide to everything. It covers such vital It girl information as: how to compile your own soundtrack, by Jade Jagger; how to look good in a photo, by Gisele Bundchen (lighting apparently and for long legs "point one leg into the centre of the frame and get the photographer to shoot looking up your body"); how to get dressed in five minutes and how to buy a house.

There's also how to pick out a shoe, by Manolo Blahnik, and how to enhance your finer assets, by Kylie Minogue.

A vital manual for life, especially the instructive heels chapter, which details how to walk in them on pavements: "In London, stay on the inside (near shop windows) and avoid the cracks. Milan, walk on the outside or risk getting heels trapped in the grating. In Paris, walk in the road and don't attempt cobbles. In New York, just hail a cab like everyone else." Life-changing stuff.