The place was King Street, Manchester, where a luxury designer store had just arrived in town. This was the late 1990s and I was 19 years old. Grunge was still a thing, but I had 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 step inside those four walls.

There was a bag they sold that I had on a pinboard in my room. Kate Moss had it. So too did every other celebrity I admired. It was very simple really — a sort of carpet bag but rendered in the softest calf leather and with a tiny gold clasp. I simply wanted to see what it would look like in the crook of my arm, and of course to 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 was locked, the result being I sort of tripped into the glass. Farrah Storr remembers being shown to the nearest sofa by a Shop Assistant and then kept waiting for 25 minutes while they served someone better dressed (stock image) The shop assistant, a woman only a few years older than myself, looked at me without moving a single facial muscle, then put her head down. I waited what must have been no more than two or three minutes before she finally opened the door, but it might as well have been an hour.

Once inside however, there didn’t appear to be any actual stock 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 ‘in particular’, a phrase which even today sets me on edge, I haltingly mentioned ‘the bag’. I felt like an intruder in a foreign land ‘I was wondering if I could see it in black?’ I whispered.

When the words came out of my mouth, I suddenly sounded like Joanna Lumley. She smiled. ‘We only have one in Store, I’m afraid,’ she said, pointing to an orange version that sat in the window and 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 land when I first stepped in, I felt like public enemy number one in that moment as she carefully explained that there was a waiting list of up to a year for such a bag 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. The air of being hard-to-get is so key that high-end brands such as Gucci, Brunello Cucinelli and Chanel reserve special services just for their highest spenders (stock image)

So do you have to be the Devil to sell Prada? (Actually, Prada is one of those brands where the staff are genuinely warm.) Research seems to suggest so — a study by psychologists published in The Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services found customers were found to deem Luxury goods more desirable if the staff selling them were dismissive.

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

Or witness the current excitement about former Celine designer Phoebe Philo’s namesake launch due on October 30 — hundreds of thousands of fashion obsessives (including me) have signed up for the waiting list, despite no one knowing what the new label will sell, let alone the prices (expected to be high). Luxury relies on the waiting and the chatter As counterintuitive as it sounds, it all makes sense. I have, at varying times in my life, been a victim of such tactics. Like the time I was bullied into buying a shearling coat 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 seem to sell nothing under £300 and so I bought a nail buffer for, wait for it . . . £180. (I believe it was made of some sort 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 entirely sure what I wanted to prove actually.

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

I have had shop assistants show me to the nearest sofa and then leave me hanging for 25 minutes at a time while they serve someone better dressed. I have heard sharp intakes of breath when I’ve 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. BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? focused on the working lives of staff at a fictional department store called Grace Brothers I never fully understood it until I worked as a part-time sales assistant in a designer store. Until then, I’d had weekend jobs in High Street stores where unfailing helpfulness was part of the gig.

Smiles sold £60 trainers. Smiles did not 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 jumpers she neatly wrapped in tissue paper. But this, it appeared, was what it took.

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 utterly charming behind closed doors. Fashion is always tantalizingly out of reach. Just as you’ve mastered one trend, a new one comes along to trip you up. Just as you’ve saved up to buy a Chanel bag, the prices rise.

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

While there are all sorts of logistical reasons why fashion shows happen six months ahead of actual time, this delay helps with the luxury mindset. A few years ago, Burberry decided to sell its collection immediately after it had been shown on the runway. We all thought this was the way luxury was moving.

It didn’t work. Because luxury relies on the wait and the chatter and the feeling that if you’re lucky, you might have a chance. Are You Being Served? actors Sherrie Hewson as shop assistant Mrs Slocombe (left) and Niky Wardley as Miss Brahms

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

A story that sums this up is when I first joined Elle and noticed that Dior was selling lovely little friendship bracelets. I asked a very senior fashion editor why all designers didn’t offer things at this price point. ‘Oh, but they do,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘They just don’t have them on display.’ In other words: if you know, you know.

And so these stern sentries who scowl as we enter their stores are really a front line of defense.

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

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

A bit like that unrequited lover… once you know you can have them, you no longer want…

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