London Fashion Week – it’s the scariest horror show in town

JUST over a week ago, I gave a talk at the annual fundraising lunch held in Leeds by the United Jewish Israel Appeal. I told the (supremely well dressed and impeccably groomed) room of 100 women that I am a failure.

A gasp went around the room. They don’t normally invite failures to talk at their lunch, so they asked me to explain. I told them that since launching a campaign to ban images of emaciated models in 2000, the fashion industry has actually got worse. So I have failed.

How has it got worse? Well, how many examples do you need? Dior opened its couture show in July with a 14-year-old model, Sofia Mechetner, wearing a dress so sheer it exposed her nipples.

The show was awarded a ‘perfect 10’ by Vogue’s Mark Holgate, who added: ‘ Raf Simons… is a designer who likes to layer and layer his reference points in ways that are wholly of our time.’ Well, Raf certainly doesn’t like to layer his clothes, otherwise the model might have been wearing a vest. Mark ended the review: ‘If Simons’s work has in the past mined a deep seam of controlled sensuality, these carried a newer, more straightforward sexual charge.’ Well, he got that last bit right.

In New York last week, at the Victoria Beckham fashion show, a parade of very thin, preadolescent-looking girls were sent out on her catwalk, giving lie to Victoria’s assurance back in 2010 that she took her role as a designer seriously and ‘wouldn’t use very skinny girls’.

I was banned from this latest show (yet again; I really have no idea why I bother any more) and told, in fact, by an iPad-wielding lackey that I was blocking the entrance, and must move aside.

AS I stood there precarious in my heels, something hilarious happened. The ‘editor-in-chief’ of a British glossy turned up almost too late for the show, and she had – how can I put this delicately? – a big bogey sticking out of her nose.

Which, of course, makes a lie of all those broadsheet pieces you’ve been reading recently, about ‘how the fashion editors dress for the shows’, and about how they ‘take Polaroids of their outfits before they pack’.

I have had enough of being part of this ridiculous, dishonest freak show. I am burning my London Fashion Week tickets as I write, seriously alarming the staff at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden. I’ve just pointed out I am not, in fact, smoking, and as I have so few tickets, it’s a very small bonfire.

Why are men in this country having their lives ruined for touching an adult woman on her behind, while a super-rich designer sends a child, breasts exposed, down a runway and is applauded and given a perfect 10 from someone who carries a man bag.

I’ve just completed a screenplay about the fashion, beauty and PR business. In it is this scene, taken entirely from life. London Fashion Week, front row inside the Royal Opera House. GLOSSY EDITOR: I thought I was going to be late! Hyde Park was closed because of a visit by the Pope. ( Rolls eyes.) And he’s

not even Italian! ( She gets a novel out of her Burberry tote, and starts reading.)

A celebrity arrives – we can tell it’s someone famous as she’s obscured by a swarm of paparazzi and TV cameras. HEROINE (to her bookworm neighbour): Have you any idea who the celeb is? GLOSSY EDITOR: What am I? Human Google?

My film is supposed to be a comedy, but I’m thinking it might be more at home in the horror genre…