Raven haired companions: six palettes worn against black

Angelika, 172 cm and athletic, dresses in a single decisive colour, most often red, and adds almost nothing to it. The restraint suits a tennis player who is out on court before most of Mayfair is awake and who argues about new painting, fairly, most nights; a private view on Savile Row is her natural opening, and a basement jazz trio her natural close.

Roxi, 168 cm with a curving figure, wears the shades other people only admire in shop windows, with gold at the wrists and, on the right evening, a flower behind one ear. She boxes before breakfast, chases Atlantic swells when the calendar allows and orders her steak rare at the Guinea Grill without looking at the menu.

Karolina, 174 cm and slim, keeps to long black lines and one silver cuff, and is remarkably easy to overlook until she decides otherwise. A pianist since childhood, she knows which arias repay an evening in the stalls, and on the walk to dinner she will make you look up at Mayfair fanlights you had never once noticed.

Milena, 175 cm and curving, her black hair high-gloss, treats black as drama: strong shoulders, statement earrings, a lipstick with intent. She takes the centre table at Novikov as though it had been held for her, and her candour comes wrapped in real warmth.

Danielle, 170 cm, prefers black cloth with a greenish depth under lamplight, a banquette with a view of the room and a conversation that drifts from old films to a poem you once learned by heart. At any table she joins, she becomes the guest the others keep glancing towards.

Violetta breaks the pattern, and at 178 cm she stands above everyone else on the roster. Her black hair is long and sleek, but her clothes are the colour of sand, with gold at ear and wrist and a camel coat once the weather turns. She swims long distances in cold water, remembers everything she reads, and at the right moment delivers a one-liner that silences a table before setting it laughing.

Cressida's shorthand runs roughly this way. A gala where photographs will be taken suits Milena or Violetta. An opera night belongs to Karolina, a gallery opening to Angelika, a slow two-course dinner in a mews to Danielle, and an evening that ought to end in laughter to Roxi. For an unhurried night that feels less like an appointment than a date, the arm in arm page describes how the Society arranges it.

Angelika, Karolina, Milena and Violetta, all 172 cm or taller, also stand among the statuesque, and a curving figure puts Danielle, Milena and Roxi on the curvaceous page too. By stage of life they spread across all three: Angelika and Roxi in the early twenties, Danielle, Karolina and Milena later in that decade, Violetta in her thirties.