Bookings by Occasion · Girlfriend experience companionship
Arm in arm: the girlfriend experience as the Society understands it
The phrase is borrowed, and the Society uses it carefully. Here it describes an evening in which nothing feels booked. She is glad to see you and says so. She orders one dessert and two spoons without asking. On the walk back through the square she takes your arm, partly because the night has turned cold and partly because she wants to.
It carries no price of its own and follows no script. Choose any length, a single hour or a whole dinner, and simply tell Cressida this is the mood you want. Like everything the Society arranges, it remains time and companionship, with nothing further on offer.
At 20:00
The occasion
Arranged around the evening you describe, never around a menu of extras.
Who suits Girlfriend experience evenings
4 companions Cressida would propose first for an evening like this. Everyone else on the roster may be asked as well.
Not a performance
Nobody is asked to play a part, and nothing about it is staged. Your companion does not pretend to be your partner, invent a shared history or adopt a character for the evening. The warmth is real because it is hers: the ease of someone who likes company and is good at it. Guests who have tried the more theatrical versions elsewhere tend to notice the difference inside the first quarter of an hour.
The small courtesies
Most of it lives in small things that are hard to describe and easy to recognise.
Among other people
In company the manner holds. At a friend's drinks party or in a crowded bar she stays close enough to be plainly with you, joins in without taking over, and never needs rescuing from a conversation. Anyone who meets you both sees two people comfortable in each other's company, and nothing about her suggests otherwise.
An evening across W1
Nothing grand is required, and the walking is half the pleasure. A glass outside one of the old pubs of Shepherd Market on a summer evening, supper somewhere small on Bruton Place, a detour through the arcades off Piccadilly before the shutters come down. In winter, the fire and the low chairs of a hotel lounge in Mayfair, and nobody in a hurry to be anywhere else.
The After Dark Notes explain why the corner table matters more than the restaurant around it, and argue for taking dessert and digestifs somewhere else entirely, which suits this kind of evening well.
For a first time
Guests new to the Society often choose this kind of evening without having a name for it. If that is you, say so when you write, and say nothing more if you would rather not. Cressida will suggest someone patient and easy to talk to. Ninety minutes at £900 make a gentle beginning; two hours at £1,100 leave room for supper, and the rates page holds the longer lengths. Nothing needs planning in advance beyond the address and the hour.
Second evenings
This occasion improves with repetition in a way no other does. On a second evening she remembers how you take your coffee, which story you were halfway through and the restaurant you meant to try; by the third, the first ten minutes are skipped altogether. Guests who find a companion they like often ask Cressida to keep a regular evening with her, and it is easily done.
Companions with the knack
Cindy laughs quickly and listens patiently, and she keeps to earlier evenings, which suits a weeknight. Lea is apt to drop a plan midway for a better one, and her better ones are usually right. Tina has a gift for letting the tension out of an evening without anyone seeing how she did it. Lucy speaks softly, watches the sky out of habit and makes a quiet supper feel like an occasion. Lea, Tina and Lucy are among the petite companions of the roster.
Girlfriend experience evenings, asked
Only in tone. A dinner date can be formal or relaxed; tell Cressida you would like it relaxed and affectionate, and it becomes this.
No. She is herself, which is rather the point. Warmth that has to be acted is easy to spot, and the Society asks nobody to act it.
Yes, and daylight suits it well: a Sunday walk into Hyde Park from Park Lane, lunch, then the Wallace Collection, where the Fragonards reward a slow look. The tariff does not change with the daylight.
The Society never writes first, and neither does she. To see her again, send Cressida a line and her name.
No more than for any call. One hour is possible, although the ease this occasion depends on usually needs two.
Notes for the occasion
- 5 min readThe second venue: leaving after the main course, on purposeLeave the restaurant after the main course and take pudding and a last glass somewhere with deeper chairs. Where to go in W1, what to order, and how to leave without breaking the spell.
- 5 min readThe three hour dinner: pacing each course so the talk never runs dryThree hours sounds long until the first course arrives. How the unabridged dinner is paced, which subjects suit which course, and how to ask a kitchen to slow down politely.
Other occasions
In the old Mayfair sense, calling hours were the afternoons on which a household received visitors, and a footman carried their names upstairs. The Society keeps its calling hours around the clock...
Of everything the Society arranges, the dinner date is the evening it arranges with the most pleasure. Four hours at £1,800, shaped around a single reservation: something to drink beforehand, a...
A song from 1940 put a nightingale in Berkeley Square, and Mayfair has smiled about it ever since, because nobody has reliably heard one there. The hours the song describes are real, though: the...
A good many of the Society's guests reach Mayfair by air and leave it the same way, sometimes on a scheduled flight from Heathrow and sometimes from an airfield most people never see. Travel...
London's formal calendar runs through a handful of rooms in W1, and the Society's desk knows most of them by their seating plans. A charity gala in the vast Great Room at Grosvenor House. An...
Two companions, one guest, one evening: that is the whole definition of a duo, and the Society approaches it the way a good hostess approaches a seating plan. Two people who merely look well side...
Some of the Society's most enjoyable evenings are arranged for two hosts rather than one. The company is the same; the table is simply set for three, and the conversation has two people to delight...
Mayfair after ten belongs to its clubs. Some are nightclubs with a doorman and a list; more are members' clubs behind Georgian fronts that give nothing away. A night out with the Society moves...
The London Season never quite ended; it simply stopped announcing itself. Between the Chelsea Flower Show in May and the close of Glorious Goodwood at the start of August, the calendar still fills...
Girlfriend experience evenings, arranged
Tell Cressida what the occasion is, what to wear and when it begins. She proposes companions who suit it and settles the rest in one thread.