She’s an ex-editor of Elle and a veteran of the front row. Yet, admits FARRAH STORR, it took her years to learn… How to crack the curse of the snooty shop assistant!

The location was King Street, Manchester, where a luxury designer store had just arrived in town.

It was the late 1990s and I was 19 years old. Grunge was still a thing, but I ditched my usual outfit of boots, floral skirt and Oasis green cardigan in favor of something more elegant. That’s how much I wanted to walk into those four walls.

There was a bag they sold that I had on a board in my room. Kate Moss had it. So did every other celebrity I admired. It was actually very simple – a kind of carpet bag, but made in the softest calf leather and with a tiny gold clasp.

I simply wanted to see how it would look in the crook of my arm, and of course find out the price… so I could figure out how many lifetimes it would take to save up and buy it.

The first thing I got wrong was my entrance. I went to push open the door and found it locked, with the result that I sort of tripped into the glass.

The shop assistant, a woman only a few years older than me, looked at me without moving a single facial muscle, then put her head down.

I didn’t wait more than two or three minutes before she finally opened the door, but it might as well have been an hour.

Once inside, there seemed to be no real inventory on the shop floor. So I walked very, very slowly around the perimeter of the room, feigning interest in a single scarf on the wall.

When she finally asked me if I was looking for anything ‘specific’, a phrase that still puts me on edge even today, I quietly mentioned ‘the bag’.

“I was wondering if I could see it in black?” I whispered.

As the words came out of my mouth, I suddenly sounded like Joanna Lumley. She smiled.

“We’ve only got one in the shop, I’m afraid,” she said, pointing to an orange version sitting in the window which, it was clear, she had no intention of getting out.

I pressed on. Yes, but did it come in black? And if so, when would they have more in stock?

If I was an intruder in a foreign country when I first walked in, I felt like public enemy number one at that moment when she carefully explained that there was a waiting list of up to a year for such a bag is and even then there was no guarantee you would get the color you wanted.

“Shall I put your name down?” she asked. I said no and scurried out.

So do you have to be the Devil to sell Prada? (Actually, Prada is one of those brands where the staff is genuinely warm.)

Research seems to suggest so – a study by psychologists published in The Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services found that customers find luxury goods more desirable than the staff selling them are dismissive.

At least the air of hard to get is the key. Take the appointment-only Gucci salon in Los Angeles; Casa Cucinelli, the invitation-only shopping salons of the Italian label Brunello Cucinelli; and Chanel’s salon privés — all part of the industry’s efforts to offer something extra to their best spenders.

Or witness the current excitement over former Celine designer Phoebe Philo’s namesake launch on October 30 – hundreds of thousands of fashion obsessives (myself included) have signed up for the waiting list, despite no one knowing what the new label won’t sell, let alone the (expectedly high) prices.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, it all makes sense. I have been a victim of such tactics at various times in my life. Like the time I was bullied into buying a razor in a very high-end Parisian department store.

Or, even just a few years ago, when I found myself in one of those weird high-end boutiques that didn’t seem to sell anything under £300 and so I bought, wait for it, a nail bumper. . . £180. (I believe it was made of some kind of bone).

I only bought it because the shop assistant gave me such a withering look when I walked in that I wanted to prove, well, I’m not quite sure what I actually wanted to prove.

Luxury is aloof. By its nature, it is only available to the few, largely because true luxury goods are made by artisans and therefore require time and skill. But scarcity creates a cruel mentality.

I’ve had shop assistants show me to the nearest bank and then leave me hanging for 25 minutes at a time while they serve someone better dressed. I heard sharp intakes of breath when I asked for items in a size 14.

I know what it feels like to hold a shoe in your hands and wait, and wait for someone, anyone, to come and serve you.

I never fully understood this until I worked as a part-time sales assistant in a designer store. Until then I had weekend jobs in High Street shops where unfailing helpfulness was part of the act.

Smiles sold £60 trainers. Smiles didn’t sell £2,000 dresses, I quickly learned.

The most profitable sales assistant in the store was a woman who ate one slice of white bread all day. Her hunger made her psychotic towards customers.

Seriously, she looked like she wanted to kill the very women whose cashmere sweaters she neatly wrapped in tissue paper. But that, it seems, was what was needed.

I got a closer look at how luxury works when I was editor of Elle. There aren’t many smiles on the front row, even though most of those editors are perfectly charming behind closed doors.

Fashion is always tantalizingly out of reach. Just as you’ve mastered one trend, a new one comes along to charge you up. Just as you saved up to buy a Chanel bag, the prices go up.

But it is in the waiting and wanting and not feeling that you really belong, that desire is created. Anyone who has ever felt unrequited love understands this.

While there are all kinds of logistical reasons why fashion shows take place six months ahead of the actual time, this delay helps with the luxury mindset.

A few years ago, Burberry decided to sell its collection immediately after it was shown on the runway. We all thought this was the way luxury was moving.

It didn’t work. Because luxury relies on the waiting and the talking and the feeling that if you’re lucky, you might have a chance.

That’s why designers only release a certain number of shoes and bags each season, and you often have to know what week they’re hitting the store before you can even think about owning them. (Which means you need one of those frosty sales assistants to tell you.)

A story that sums it up is when I first joined Elle and noticed that Dior was selling cute little friendship bracelets.

I asked a very senior fashion editor why all designers weren’t offering things at this price point. “Oh, but they do,” she said conspiratorially. “They just didn’t exhibit them.” In other words: if you know, you know.

And so these strict sentinels who blink as we enter their stores are really a front line of defense.

They keep the mystique of luxury alive. For them, yes, but also for us.

Of course, when you get to a certain age, like I am now, the gig is kind of up. Because by the time I could afford to shop in designer stores, that was the moment they lost their appeal.

A bit like that unrequited lover… once you know you can have them, you don’t want any more.