So is the first £1,000 haircut worth it?

Sejour, a swanky new hair salon in Chelsea, is the kind of place high-maintenance girls dream about in their sleep. Opened last month by two former protégés of Nicky Clarke (yes, he of the sideburns and cowboy boots), it is an elegant blur of creamy leather, velvet cushions, scented candles and silk kimonos (no nasty nylon overalls here). It is also, believe it or not, the first salon in London to offer a £1,000 haircut - an experience I decided to road-test. I am a Yorkshirewoman, you see, and therefore generally unconvinced by such barmy-sounding extravagance.

The day - yes, you must give up a whole day - begins when a limo rocks up outside your door. I love limos: they are air-conditioned, unlike the bus, and this one contained the new Vogue plus a choice of mineral waters.

In what seemed like only minutes, I was in Bray Place, where a man was wrapping me in my maroon gown (very Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and foisting a menu upon me. I ordered a chicken salad (protein improves hair growth) and a detoxifying berry smoothie (to encourage shine).

Thus, the pampering begins. For your £1,000 you get a manicure and a pedicure, colour and a cut. The best bit, however, is having your hair washed after the colour has been applied. Usually, I hate leaning back into the basin - I read once that this causes fatal blood clots or something - but at Sejour, you feel as though you could lie there for hours. For one thing, someone massages your head, and wraps it in a steaming-hot, lavender-scented towel. For another, you get to lie in a special massage chair that wriggles and jiggles and generally makes you feel glad all over.

I love my manicure and pedicure, which includes lengthy massages of the relevant body parts. I also love the champagne cocktail someone brings me as I sit beneath the blow-dryer. In fact, I love almost everything about Sejour, from the flowery wallpaper to the bubble-gum pink work-stations to the liquorice smell of the incense that burns while I lie dreaming of winning the Lottery.

The staff are warm and smiley; the windows are thrown wide open so the breeze rustles the pages of our glossy magazines. The only thing I do not love is - oh dear - my haircut.

I have a fear of bleach, and have said as much to my colourist. But still, he makes me over all Swedish. And then there is the cut, which is fine until, in a fit of exuberance, Terry announces that when he has finished "hemming" my hair, he will make it "BIG!"

Out come the rollers, the hair spray and the curling tongs. By the time he has finished, I look like someone who is about to go to a Charlie's Angels tribute party.

A make-up artist sets about my face. I love my eyes - they're deliciously smokey - but I fear the lipstick and paint everywhere else make me look a touch Bet (Lynch). Funny the way too much slap can make a girl look so irredeemably butch.

Was my day worth £1,000? Well, if you've the cash to spend, you could do worse than spend an afternoon reclining in Sejour's amazing massage chairs. But the truth is that, in one respect at least, hair stylists are the same wherever you go. You see them approaching, scissors in hand, and you just know that they've already decided what they're going to do. Your pleas for leniency fall on deaf ears.

Sejour, 3-5 Bray Place, SW3,

020 7589 1100.