Nicole Farhi

This is so late it’s almost pointless but nevertheless might as well do something with the pics so-
The next morning was the Nicole Farhi show, which was pretty much the most amazing point of my life. Just seeing the clothes that people were wearing, from the jewel coloured dyed furs to the black leather biker gloves of the lady sitting next to me. I rushed there after waking at six thirty, and it started to rain as I left Covent Garden station, so I was getting more and more flustered and bedraggled. Entering the Royal Opera House and hearing the PR girls whispering “Alexandra Shulman has just entered” made it all better. A lovely man directed me to my seat, and I ignored him and sat second row right next to the catwalk entrance. I recognised Hadley Freeman and Jess Cartner-Morley from the Guardian team, and the head buyer from Harrods, as well as the great Shulman herself. In general the audience was older, reflecting both the designers prestige and target client. The collection itself was predictably conservative. The pieces were all wearable and for the most part desirable, but uninspiring. There was the ubiquitous shiny black and black mesh seen just about everywhere for the past few seasons, with gold sparkles on black chiffon providing a flash of evening glamour. My favourite pieces were a black dress with a funnel neck in thick tweed-like material,
a black dress with something subtly weird going on in the arms, and a red dress with draping over one shoulder. My pet hates were the prints and the squares of gold beading. So the show ended and I rushed out too terrified to ask anyone to take a snap of their outfit, and I legged it onto the tube where everyone from the show glanced at one another.