Welcome to the fabulous glory and madness that is the fashion shows. Or as actress Shannen Doherty puts it, “It’s such a weird thing, with all the celebrities and different sorts of people sitting around. Aliens would be like, “What? What are these people doing?” Weird alright, but before anybody suggests a catwalk show is just a bunch of people sitting around looking at frocks and drinking champagne, let me tell you that this is work.

In order to succeed, you need the diplomatic skills of Kofi Annan and the work ethic of Margaret Thatcher. o­n top of that, you’ve got to smile at the cameras, air-kiss the right people and vaporise the wrong o­nes. Then there’s zero hours’ sleep for four weeks straight, not to mention the mind-and body-numbing reality of eight shows a day, in four different cities – New York, Paris, Milan and London.

The shows start at nine in the morning and finish somewhere around midnight. In-between, there’s the little matter of doing some actual work – like writing your daily newspaper page, organising a magazine shoot, filling in next season’s order for a store’s clothes and generally just figuring out what the hell woman are going to want to wear in six months’ time. And, no, falling asleep mid-show is not an option, but looking bored – as long as it’s cool bored and not stupid bored – is fine.

As a fashion spectator, that can get pretty disorientating. Look at models day after day and you start to think that everyone looks like that. I remember walking down ten flights of stairs talking to Naomi Campbell after a show in New York. High o­n the tenth floor, up o­n a catwalk, surrounded by other equally gorgeous creatures, Naomi looked almost normal. It was o­nly as we began to walk down, surrounded by fashion journalists and buyers – who really are normal – that I began to truly see that Naomi is not like us. For a start, she is twice the height and half the size – like she’s been pulled like a strip of toffee candy. But the reality of Naomi – and the rest of the supers – was revealed when we spilled o­n to the busy New York street, where she looked about as normal as a pink flamingo that’s wandered away from its flock.

And that’s what high fashion’s like. It’s not o­nly a different tribe, but a different planet – planet fashion, as insiders affectionately know it. o­n planet fashion there are different rules. Firstly, the laws of time don’t apply. It might be spring outside, but inside you’re looking at autumn. And you’re always inside, hundreds of you, packed into the pitch black or dazzled by mega-watt spotlights, blasted by sound. Around the international runaways, it’s like a club where nobody’s dancing and the dress code’s incomprehensible. So here’s a tip – either you dress up (head to toe this season or, preferably, next but not last – too quaint) and remember that glitter, satin, fur and 5in heels are fine at nine n the morning. Either that, or you dress right down in jeans, trainers, trashed jacket and T-shirt. Just be sure that the jeans are the right brand, the trainers are impossible to get hold of, the jacket is o­ne of Marc’s finest, and the T-shirt says something ironically finny or rude.

Backstage, it’s crazier. The tension’s turned so tight you think it might snap. A model runs to a rail of clothes, half-naked, pulling off a top as a dresser pulls o­n a skirt. Three more run to the catwalk, camera crews, tables spilling with bags, jewels and feathers and make-up artists powdering as they go, or a hairdresser chasing with a brush. It seems impossible but the moment they step into the spotlights, those girls look like they’ve just spent an hour in the beauty parlour. Ahead of them is a bank of 1,000 cameras, flashing like strobes, and harassed photographers yelling that they’re turning too slow, spinning too fast or catcalling at a suddenly naked breast.

The audience is quieter but still as tense; notebooks and pens busy, the human eye recording faster than any camera the hair, make-up, shoes, bags, belts, jewels, coats, dresses, and skirts of the season. Blink and it’s gone; but that’s the nature of fashion. And it’s in that blink of an eye that the fashion business spends millions of pounds. Over there is a dress destined for the cover of US Vogue; next up are two outfits to grace the opening pages of Marie Claire’s autumn trend story; in a second might appear the jackets that fly off Harvey Nichol’s shelves. And which bad is going to be the season’s must-have and become the stuff of waiting lists and fashion fortunes?

Which is why the seating in a fashion row is as crucial as the show itself. There is, in fashion, a front front row. Ordinary people might be forgiven for thinking that if a catwalk is banded o­n three sides by seats, that there are three front rows. Wrong. The front front row is the o­ne directly facing the catwalk. That’s where you’ll find the American press (fashion’s heavy hitters) such as Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, Glenda bailey, editor of Harper’s Bazaar, and a sprinkling of celebs.

Designers don’t just invite celebs because they look cute sitting in the front row. There’s a whole marketing machine swinging into action before Beyonce (Marc Jacob) or Uma (Diane von Furstenberg) or Joely (Dior) park their pert little bums o­n fashion’s front line. First, it ahs to be the right celeb, at the right time. Timing, in fashion, is crucial. Get it wrong and you look as sad as yesterday’s boot-cuts, so a B-lister says either you don’t know your stuff or you’re so not now that the A-list won’t show.

A designer with a great celeb front row is guaranteed headlines in every paper across the globe, no matter how dodgy the clothes they are showing. So it pays to have friends in high places. Celebs are so crucial to fashion that every major designer has a person dedicated to keeping tabs o­n the scene, not to mention keeping them sweet enough to show up in the right frock when they hit Hollywood’s red carpet. So important, in fact, that even relative unknowns can make their names, literally, o­n their backs. Getting them to strut their stuff guarantees a media feeding frenzy. When designer Maria Grachvogel persuaded pal Victoria Beckham to model for her, the designer went from second-leaguer to front-page star overnight. It didn’t much matter that she looked like a novice o­n the catwalk, it was the thought that count. Stella McCartney, herself rock royalty, has always understood the dog eat dog nature of star style and proved as much, even as a beginner, when she got best mate Kate Moss to model her student collection.

It’s easy to forget, among the glamour and chaos, that this is all just business as usual – a salesmen’s convention with better frocks. It’s also o­ne hell of a blockbuster – filled with gorgeous girls, mega bucks, power politics and star appearances. And that’s why fashion goes beyond o­ne of the greatest stories ever told.

Sally Brampton
Collected by Chu Vân Hương - A1 98-01