You know how it is when you are engrossed in a meaningful conversation with somebody and suddenly the eyes glaze over and swivel away ever so slightly, the voice tapering off. Here we are at the choicest of shows at an art gallery near Bond Street in London, the kind where flutes of champagne float by without pause and all those lithe figures in black, male and female, spill out, chattering, onto the street. Well, the silver-haired academic with serious credentials and sartorial flair (impeccable in white linen) and that oh-so-earnest propah accent the BBC dumped aeons ago (more Bertie Wooster than say Orlando Bloom) turns away mid-sentence babbling something about high modernism.

Following his patrician gaze I see a vision sheathed in black with endless legs swishing by on stilettos, so pointed, Sharon Stone could have used them in Basic Instinct instead of something as utilitarian as an ice pick. Naturally, she is blonde – that American kind of blonde that signals good health, daily shampoos and tons of Caesar’s salad without the croutons and dressing – naked leaves that is. The lady in black, like the other two swanning around the gallery that evening, is a gallerywali – a female receptionist or associate, not the boss mind you, and not anybody particularly knowledgeable about the canons of art.

A touch of class
‘Gallerina’ is the delicious new word for these waif-like creatures you can spot in Chelsea and other hotspot art districts in Manhattan and, increasingly, in London. Why ‘gallerina’? Well, these gallery ladies, many of them elegantly tall, tend to be delicate looking, like ballerinas. Their role goes beyond adding a touch of class to the cut-throat and jumpy world of the art mart. In their black Prada dresses (genuine and fake) and air of aloofness (genuine or fake) gallerinas also bolster the exclusivity and clubby factor of upmarket galleries. They incarnate the Us and Them factor: for instance if you are scruffy – or worse dowdy – without any discreet signs of being seriously rich (there are unwritten codes that only the Us people know about) the gallerina’s icy glare can freeze you in your tracks. She can do the same if you ask for a price list as soon as you enter: in other words if you have to ask you shouldn’t be here, that kind of thing.

I recently came across the word gallerina in Danielle Ganek’s intelligently tart debut novel Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, published this summer. It’s an insider’s tongue-in-cheek take on the rarified and curious world of the contemporary art scene – insider because Ganek and her husband are serious Manhattan art collectors. No wonder we get to see the warts beneath the glamorous and seductive facades. What the novel The Devil Wears Prada did for, on second thought make that to, the fashion world, Lulu Meets God… is doing to the contemporary art scene. In both worlds, largely fuelled by San Pellegrino sparkling water, appearance is all. You are to a large extent what you wear – the clothes as much as the attitude.