The owner arrived with a folder of beige-and-gold references: calm, respectable, like every good salon.

Yet everything her brand needed was already there: permanent make-up that is not supposed to show, and an owner impossible to overlook.

Out of this came the supermodels of the nineties, a time when natural beauty knew how to be loud.

Terracotta of a depth only French pigments give, a black-and-white portrait of Bellucci, not a single beige decision. The finished studio is indistinguishable from the concept collage.

And the colour of the wall became the sign itself: take the name off the door, and the studio would still be recognised.