Some days it’s a little harder to get it together. You know those days…your skin won’t behave, your hair just isn’t happening, you wish you were someone else (someone like Gisele Bundchen). To top it off, the outfit you’d workshopped in your head last night hasn’t worked in reality – and you only realise this standing at the bus stop.

I know these days too well – just last week I had one. And it’s on days like these I do what I do best: delegate the hard work to a professional. It’s personal style salvation by way of a blowdry.

All done, I bounced out of the salon and into work feeling infinitely brighter and shinier. Gorgeously groomed hair took the focus off my glow deficit and the excess baggage under my eyes, and glossed up my boring black outfit.

Then I headed over to Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital to take part in a Look Good… Feel Better workshop for women enduring cancer treatment. And very bloody quickly checked my ego – and my bounce – at the door. As did the rest of the beauty journos who had fronted up to volunteer for the day.

We got to work unpacking beauty products donated by every brand imaginable: L’Oréal cleansers, Chanel toners, Avon moisturisers, YSL foundations, Estée Lauder lipsticks. (Since the workshops began in 1990, the local industry has donated $22 million worth of product.)

As the patients started to arrive, in walked a striking woman with a fabulous vintage fur, navy nails, and a head scarf. She de-robed, and de-scarfed to reveal a savage surgical scar snaking across her bare skull. Quite literally breathtaking.

While I was consumed by vanity earlier that day, she was probably caught up with chemo or radiation therapy. While someone was fussing over my hair, she was possibly mourning the loss of hers.

I say possibly, because you wouldn’t have known; she sat proud and positive, learning about skincare and makeup, trying on wigs and turbans. All with the Today show filming in the background.

The women were gracious, grateful, inspiring. And a reminder that there is nothing like a healthy dose of perspective.

For a Look Good…Feel Better workshop in your state, call 1800 650 960 or visit www.lgfb.org.au

Lucinda aprons up to support women with cancer at a Look Good... Feel Better workshop