L.F.W...

This past week I've been gingerly dipping my toes back in the waters of London Fashion Week. I've had a bit of a funny, ambivalent relationship with it over the past few years, preferring instead to go to a few shows in Paris when I could and hide my head under a duvet for the duration of L.F.W. I first rocked up at L.F.W. as a wee young thing seventeen years ago, when I interned for designers - yes you read that right - I can't believe it was that long ago. I stopped going at all a few years ago. But because of the blog I'd been getting invites and then this time around, without thinking too deeply about it, I went along. What was more interesting to me than most of the clothes if I'm honest, was how things have changed from the olden days of yore. On the organisation and digital technology side of things they are ON IT. The live-streaming of all the shows, the blog bar at Somerset House, the way information is relayed - I can't fault it. Everything has gone up about ten notches and Somerset House itself looks beautiful. I felt a small swelling of patriotic pride in the British Fashion Council.

Lara Bohinc

Felder Felder

I bumped into a friend who's a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics. His research has to do with measuring value and he was interviewing people at L.F.W. He wanted to speak to people who had been in the fashion industry for ten years or more, and who were involved in a measurable way. Needless to say, it was extremely difficult to find people who fulfilled those criteria hanging around at L.F.W.! And that is where London Fashion Week never changes. For me, the whole getting dressed like you're going to a Halloween party, to sit on the front row looking disdainful isn't a plus point. I really wanted my friend to interview some of those people, so I could find out what they actually do, if anything. The people he spoke to who on first glance looked like they might not have anything to do with fashion, turned out to be the ones with the most solid involvement in it.

It all became a bit Fellini-esque when my friend was trying to find someone, anyone, who wasn't already either filming someone with a phone, or being filmed, so that he could film an interview with them. Then I found myself standing outside the Mark Fast show, watching it on the big screen, holding a large camera. It crossed my mind that I might catch a glimpse of Emmanuelle Alt or someone on the way out. I immediately left.