i want, doesn't get.: london fashion week, bitches

“You will be stood in the cold for 11 hours a day and you will probably be very bored, so are you still interested in working with the British Fashion Council?” - Dumb question.

Yes it’s true that by the end of the week I had developed a pretty severe cold and was deliriously singing “love machine” by Girls Aloud on repeat due to sleep depravation, but working at London Fashion Week was an experience like no other. It was an opportunity for me to make some amazing friends, see some incredible people from the fashion industry in their natural habitat and of course be part of an event that is usually only privy to fashion insiders. In my interview I was promised some pastel Levi’s jeans as part of my uniform, but due to alleged health and safety reasons myself and the rest of the team ended up wearing a rather hideous white lab coat so that we would stand out in a crowd of well dressed people (I was sweet talked into liking it when the devastatingly handsome head of marketing announced “they wear them at Margiela”). I was working as a ‘Wayfinder’ which meant I was essentially an encyclopaedia on all things LFW. I needed to know which designers were showing in the various exhibition rooms, when the next show was starting in the Courtyard show space and even where the nearest toilets were located and I needed to know it all off by heart just incase some self important fashionista got lost in one of the many identical corridors of Somerset House. We worked in shifts so that we didn’t get too bored if we were positioned in a quiet area or die of hyperthermia stood out in the courtyard or on the terrace, which meant we got to see all aspects of what goes into running an event of that size and importance. Working out in the courtyard was the best spot for people watching (and celeb spotting) but it meant I also witnessed some very strange sights. The majority of people were exceptionally well dressed and looked so impeccable that I wanted to crawl into a hole and set my lab coat on fire. There were however people wearing the clothing of nightmares for example a very interesting man in a yellow and flesh coloured PVC gimp suit accented with PVC red lips and inflatable yellow hair and of course matching yellow stilettos. The most desirable position, in my eyes anyway, was on the registration desk. There we were guaranteed to be rushed of our feet, but it also meant that we held the power to hand out passes to the designer exhibitions to the thousands of buyers, bloggers and members of the press that strutted in and out of the registration hall in their fashion week best. I went a bit power mad to be honest. Along with the passes we were instructed to hand out goodie bags, which were made by Mulberry, to press and buyers but NO ONE else. I think the fact that by simply uttering the words “sorry, no you can’t have one” to the unlucky bloggers, visitors and exhibitors who were not permitted to have goodie bags suddenly turned them into fashion weeks’ most coveted item and at one point we actually caught a woman trying to stuff no less than six bags into her handbag. Safe to say I took a bag or two for myself; let’s call it one of the perks of the job.