The woman hesitated. ‘I guess…’

‘Good! Now try it on I’m sure it’ll make you look fabulous.’ Amy ushered her into a dressing room and drew the curtain. A few minutes later the woman emerged looking fantastically bizarre – her face wilted.

Another gasp from Amy and then: ‘You look so Blancmange!’ she squealed.

The customer’s face lifted slightly. ‘Do I?’

‘You do indeed!’

‘But don’t you think it makes me look really fat?’

‘Of course not!’ Amy said with a wink to Sandra. ‘In fact, it accen…tu…ates your… Veluxtuousness.’ Her brain was screaming at her, but if somehow her faux bimbo fashionista credibility was to save the shop…

‘I’ve never gotten voluptuous before.’ The woman was happy.

‘Yeah, vol-up-tuous!’ Amy confirmed slowly.

‘But this is a size twelve. I’m a sixteen. It’s a bit of a squeeze.’

‘Hold on. It’ll look even more Blancmange than ever in just a sec!’ Amy rushed to the rack and brought back a leopard print corset. ‘Put this with it…… See. Now it makes sense. Now we need to round it off with shoes to match.’

‘Isn’t it a bit too much leopard print?’ fretted the woman.

‘Darling in this season there’s no such thing as too much leopard print. Now what shoe size are you?’

‘Uh… A ten I think.’

‘Ten? Nonsense!’ Amy cried as she disappeared into the back of the shop.

The woman inspected herself in the mirror and begun to believe that she really did look fantastic.

Sandra appeared behind her. She had picked up on Amy’s plan and had decided to layer the insincerity on thick. ‘My colleague will just be a few minutes,’ she said in an over-honeyed voice. ‘Those shoes have been selling like hot cakes – everyone wants them.’

The woman looked Sandra up and down, admiring her brave outfit of a purple skirt with a green jacket. ‘If only I could be as daring as her,’ she thought.

The shop phone began to ring just as Amy returned clutching a shoebox. ‘Excuse me.’ And Sandra left them to it.

‘Here we are,’ Amy said, removing a pair of equally awful yet matching shoes.

‘These? But these are three sizes too small. I’d have to squash my feet in.’

‘But Cinderella is the new Paris Hilton!’ Amy exclaimed. ‘Everyone’s copying her look. Wearing one shoe, getting jobs as maids, even being like the ugly stepsisters… Now these are slingbacks, which are the Blancmangiest items this season.’

‘But I won’t fit in them,’ the woman protested feebly.

‘Of course you can. Look – you see those straps at the end of the shoe?’ Amy began to explain, her mind racing.

‘Yes.’

‘Well what you do is hold on to those straps between your toes and wear them like that.’

‘Doesn’t that make it difficult to walk?’

‘Of course it does, but walking properly doesn’t make you…’

‘Blancmange?’ the woman offered.

‘Now you’re getting it!’

With a newfound eagerness the woman navely put on the shoes in the way Amy had explained.

‘There! Now tell me that doesn’t look fabulous?’

‘Maybe I won’t look so bad at the office party after all,’ the woman mused, staring at her reflection in one of the mirrors. ‘Oh, thank you ever so much – I’ll take it all.’

Although the technique went against both Amy and Sandra’s fashion principles, they managed to convince more middle-aged customers to purchase other such “vintage” clothing. The shop was saved. But a few weeks later Amy and Sandra were in town for lunch, when they saw a pair of women in short leopard print skirts, matching corsets, and hobbling along with their slingbacks wedged between their toes.

‘Oh, no,’ Sandra said with a burgeoning grin. ‘What have you done?’