She's spent £4,000 a year on hair extensions, £9,500 on her smile - and £36,000 on an exercise bike. How Cheryl Cole gave herself the X-factor.
Brunette Barbie: Cheryl Cole chose a daring dress to wear on her birthday night out
With the best will in the world, you could not call it subtle - but then if you have spent £4,165 on an Alexander McQueen dress for your 26th birthday party, you are probably quite anxious to be noticed.
And there's not much of it - the dress is chiefly sheer, and it probably works out at about £50 per square centimetre of fabric.
But then, as Dolly Parton famously remarked: 'You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.'
If it was not being worn by Cheryl Cole, a delectable Geordie Tinkerbell, who is only 5ft 3in tall and takes a size four dress, it would undoubtedly look even worse than it does.
But Cheryl is, it seems, the style goddess of the moment - she has the most desired hairstyle, tops every fashion poll and sells magazines like no one else.
As Melanie Rickey, fashion editor-at-large of Grazia magazine, described her to me, she is a 'brunette Barbie', whose occasional howling fashion errors make her more lovable.
Cheryl celebrated her birthday last week with an extravagant party for her friends at Vanilla private members club in London.
Simon Cowell and Dannii Minogue were in attendance. Husband footballer Ashley Cole trailed in her wake, having had a dinner with her and, rather unromantically, her mother Joan beforehand.
Joan and Cheryl come as a package deal, behaving more like sisters than mother and daughter.
Joan, 49 and divorced, spends part of the year living with Cheryl and Ashley at their mansion in Surrey, and has done ever since they returned from their honeymoon.
Cheryl apparently insists on this because she gets lonely. The other non-negotiable is Cheryl's beloved chihuahua Buster, who not only came to their 2006 wedding, but had his own diamante-encrusted outfit.
Clearly no prisoner to the diktats of good taste, Cheryl entered the ranks of the super-wealthy some time ago.
She now lives in a £3.5 million mansion on a gated estate in Oxshott, with footballer John Terry and tennis star Andy Murray as her neighbours.
Fashion mistakes: Cheryl has made many errors, such as the see-through top she wore during Euro 2006 whilst supporting husband Ashley Cole
Her own fortune is said to be £9 million - £5 million from Girls Aloud, £1 million a year from her role as a judge on X Factor, plus earnings from other endorsements and property.
Ashley, meanwhile, earns £3.5 million a year from Chelsea. The outfits she favours are in keeping with this excess.
'She is definitely a style icon, but not a fashion icon,' says Melanie Rickey. 'She is someone who most young girls would really like to look like. It's not about the labels she wears, but about her look. She has a sort of brunette Barbie look about her.
The chav era: Cheryl Cole has come a long way since the days of these ill-advised outfits, including another sheer top in 2007 (left) and a tummy-exposing top and penchant for belts in 2005 (right) 'She has some terrible fashion moments - that green diamante Melissa Odabash swimsuit she wore the other week was really for a 40-something women who wanted to hide her tummy after having children. And she's got a weakness for dodgy cowboy hats.'
It was reported that Cheryl spends approximately £100,000 a year maintaining herself - from employing dieticians to stylists.
However, we can reveal that to mimic Cheryl's fashion, fitness and beauty regime you would have to spend more like £250,000 - an astonishing sum. Now, what did Dolly Parton say?
Team Hair Care: Cheryl has a trusted stylist whose job it is to dry her hair and another who looks after her extensions
BLOW-DRYS & MAKE-UP Lisa Laudat, who worked with Cheryl on Girls Aloud tours and other projects, is the trusted make-up artist she insisted on using for The X Factor.
Laudat is thought to be paid about £40,000 for styling Cheryl's hair and doing her make-up.
She has already started working with her for the auditions, which are being filmed for the new series, and will stay with her for the duration of the show.
Her fees are paid by the show's makers, Talkback.
Laudat, a sparky brunette in her late 30s, says that one of her contributions is 'good blow-drying'.
Apparently, stylists wash Cheryl's hair twice before they begin, to enhance its shine.
Laudat's also worked with Pink, Sophie Ellis Bextor and Natasha Bedingfield.
Crooked smile: Before Cheryl Cole's teeth were given the Hollywood treatment, costing up to £9,500 a year
TEETH
Cheryl has a classic Hollywood smile with perfectly even teeth, which have clearly undergone bleach whitening.
Experts say that she probably had between six and eight veneers, before her 2006 wedding, as her teeth have changed in shape.
Her spokesman says her perfect smile is the result of wearing an invisible brace a few years ago.
Cheryl spends around £8,000 a year on her teeth, plus up to a further £1,500 a year on whitening treatments.
STYLISTS
Personal choice: Cheryl chose her own outfits to wear at The X Factor auditions like this ensemble in Manchester
Cheryl is spoilt for choice - top stylists Victoria Adcock and Frank Strachan are old friends.
Adcock was hired to sort out the scrappy style of Girls Aloud in 2005 and took them from 'High Street' into more up-market territory.
Adcock has also worked with Victoria Beckham and Christina Aguilera - and persuaded Cheryl to wear shift dresses, high-waisted trousers and classic blouses.
Adcock says: 'Cheryl does the ladylike look really well.'
Strachan provides Cheryl with all-out glamour.
Hailing from Blackpool, he worked with Kylie, putting her in feathers and sequins, and with Girls Aloud, providing them with black bondage-inspired corsets for their tour.
Cheryl's spokesman says: 'She dresses herself for The X Factor auditions, but when the show goes live a stylist comes on board. She does not use a stylist day-to-day.'
For both stylists she spends about £45,000 a year. Cheryl likes J Brand jeans and has a weakness for Louboutin shoes - she is rumoured to get both free.
She spent more than £100,000 on her wedding dress, and spends possibly as much again on shoes and bags in a year. Her estimated cost for clothing is £100,000.
HAIR EXTENSIONS
Julien Guyonnet created Cheryl's Sixties-inspired bouffant hair with 'Monofibre' acrylic fibre hair extensions.
Tall, French and dashing, Guyonnet has a new salon in Notting Hill.
He told me: 'Cheryl has wavy extensions to give her volume. She comes in once every three months for the extensions, and every six weeks for a tidy-up.'
The 'volumising' extensions take about four hours to attach. They cost from £375, but Cheryl's are thought to cost £750 because of her stylist's experience. G
uyonnet says Microfibre is better than human hair as the solvents used are less harsh and the hair is lighter.
He moved to London three years ago, after being a hairdresser in a salon on the Champs Elysees. Other celebrity clients include Peaches Geldof and Russell Brand.
The total cost of Cheryl's extensions is thought to be around £4,000 a year.
EXERCISE
Cheryl had a personal trainer earlier this year, along with the rest of Girls Aloud, and claimed: 'We'd all indulged a bit too much. I felt my love handles creeping back and my weight shot up, so I decided things had to change.
'As a group, we hired a personal trainer and went for it. I just wanted to be toned. So I'd go on the treadmill for 30 minutes and then do an hour of resistance work with weights. I still have a lot of work to do on my legs.'
She was sent a Hypoxi therapy bike as a gift from Harrods three years ago. The bike costs £36,000 and while pedalling the exerciser she is supposed to wear a high-waisted rubber skirt to help banish cellulite.
However, Cheryl's spokesman said she no longer uses the bike, nor has she kept on the £14,000-a-year personal trainer.
DIET
Cheryl denies using the services of a nutritionist and says she does not diet - although she barely eats carbohydrates like bread and pasta.
Since becoming famous, she has abandoned the takeaways she enjoyed when she was a waitress in Newcastle.
She is largely vegetarian and enjoys Japanese food because of its low fat and dairy content. Miso soup and edamame beans are in, and she likes shrimp and cod.
She says: 'If I start the day eating protein, I'll try not to eat carbohydrates, but I believe you should pig out once a week. I usually pig out on a Sunday because that's my hangover day.
'I was nine stone when I joined [Girls Aloud] and I'm eight stone now.'
This gives Cheryl a body mass index of 19.5, which is just about healthy. Below 18.5 is underweight. She is 5ft 3in tall and is said to take a UK dress size four
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