CONFESSIONS FROM THE SECOND ROW

After years of active duty on the front lines, sitting through countless fashion shows around the globe, I’ve earned my doctorate for conducting an anthropological study on the complex character that is the fashion devotee. Call me (a chic) David Attenborough. 

Found basking in its natural habitat at fashion week, you’ll spot one in February and September making its biannual pilgrimage. In pursuit of fashionistas, I find myself aimlessly wandering around Zone 6 in a carefully curated outfit destined for the FROW. While dressed up like a turkey at Christmas, I spot a majestic peacock in the distance. Uncomfortably outside of its usual environment – this must be the place. 

The invite said the show starts at 2pm, which in fashion terms could mean anything between 2pm and 3pm. 3:30 if it’s Mowalola. Timing this perfectly is an art I’ve sadly still not mastered. A minute too late and you’ll find yourself unsuccessfully bargaining with stony-faced security or a stubborn PR to let you in, protesting that you are invited, unlike the ticketless hordes hanging around nearby. Instead, I arrive fashionably early and accept the booby prize: Balancing painful small talk that rarely goes beyond how busy both of you are or bone-gnawing silence. 

Outside the venue, a pride of peacocks strut up and down, desperately hoping to be candidly papped. Spotting the same faces outside (read: not inside) each and every season, I wonder what some of them actually do before remembering myself similarly camped outside Somerset House as a shameless fashion student. 

I’m now deemed important enough to warrant a seat – more so as [insert middle management title] of [insert magazine title here] than in my own right – but, hey, no complaints. OK, well, a couple. Namely, a seat on the second row? Somewhere behind the fashion editor darling of the minute and the person who only acknowledges you in an empty room. 

Entering the showspace – a cavernous, concrete structure that is ordinarily an underground car park – I sidle into my assigned seat on the shared bench past pouffes of tulle and a woman with JW Anderson’s pigeon-shaped purse. The bench groans, or maybe it’s just my fellow show-goers, irritated that yet another grifter has wormed their way into the second row from the shunned standing section. The irony? Our view is obscured by the FROW anyway, either by a comically large hat or Suzy Menkes’ signature pompadour. 

It’s 2:22, and the show is starting – hallelujah it’s early! As the models whizz past in a blur to a thumping soundtrack, my second-row sisters struggle to capture content that feigns FROW status. Across the catwalk I spy a “serious” journalist from the Independent (or maybe he’s at Vogue.com now) furiously scribbling in a tiny notebook. I’m sure it’s either the words ‘denim’, ‘80s’ and ‘pastiche’ or a cry for help. Can I borrow the pen? 

Quicker than it started, the show ends, and the stampede for the exit arrives. As the chaotic conga line crams out of a single tiny door, I wonder if this is the show I’ll get trampled to death leaving. Around me, the half-baked reviews rush in – ‘loved it!’ ‘Hated it!’ – and I remember this is only the first of eight shows today. 

A million girls would kill for this job; yet here I am bitching about being stuck on a ladder that I have repeatedly and voluntarily chosen to climb. The only way is up!