Frow back: historian Lucy Worsley hits London Fashion Week

My first thought on hearing that ES wanted to send me to London Fashion Week to lose my fashion-show virginity was glee. As a curator at London’s Historic Royal Palaces, I look after a vast collection of gowns, and BBC Four has just commissioned me to make a programme about it. It seemed the perfect opportunity for research. My second was that I’d better phone my mum.

‘I need to cancel our date this weekend,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go to some fashion shows!’

‘That’s a waste of time,’ was her answer. ‘Fashion people are all crazy.’

I told her about the £26 billion that the fashion industry contributes to the economy — not least the 30,000 espressos drunk annually during London Fashion Week — but I was a little downcast. My mum is usually annoyingly right about things.

On Saturday, the first question was what to wear. Luckily, I have a hat decorated with pheasant feathers, and when I wear it to my office at Kensington Palace my colleagues point and laugh. Maybe this was just the occasion to get it out. Maybe fashion people would turn out to be My People after all.

I set off for my very first show, that of JW Anderson. I’m sorry to say that I had not heard of Mr Anderson, and was hampered in my research by his website having crashed. Luckily, I knew exactly where his venue was — just by the big Waitrose in Bloomsbury where I often do my weekly shop. My Fashion Week experience therefore began on the No 45 bus. So far it was indistinguishable from a trip to the supermarket.

The venue became even more obvious because of the traffic jam outside, including several VIP Mercedes. One of their drivers amused me by gobbling a doner kebab and swilling Lucozade as he waited. There were crowds of strangely dressed people, many of them in culottes, fur coats and those odd Japanese platform sandals, taking pictures of each other, and a big jolly bouncer who let me in. Inside, a scary-looking lady with a clipboard, stilettos and unseasonably bare legs showed me where to sit.

I asked Susie for advice on what to bring to a fashion show, and she showed me: two telephones, a camera on a rope (so as not to lose it) and no umbrella (it would definitely get lost). Next to Susie sat a young man in a blue satin suit and a furry hat, and next to him sat veteran fashionista Hilary Alexander of The Daily Telegraph. I was pleased to notice that she, too, was following the animal-headgear trend. I think hers was a raccoon.

Suddenly, on the very dot of four, loud and anguished string music began, and a tiny twig of a girl dressed in an oversized corduroy space suit (below right) marched in. She was followed by a very similar girl in a ragged scrap of fleece blanket. Both wore expressions of grim misery. When the music dipped, I could hear waves of gentle shutter clicks from the camera pen, a sound like pixies clapping. I was quite shocked by how thin the models were. Their skinny ankles in their clumping shoes looked so pallid and fragile they made me want to weep. If that was Mr Anderson’s intention, I cannot applaud it. At the end he himself appeared, at a jog, also looking deeply unhappy. There was a smattering of clapping, but not much because most people were too busy Instagramming.

By 4.18pm, it was all over. I asked a more experienced fashion journalist, David Hayes of the Financial Times (and formerly of this chapel), for a verdict. ‘Very trendy,’ he said, ‘but possibly the Emperor’s New Clothes. Nobody knows what to think.’ As I left I noticed a forgotten umbrella under the bench.

The second show was much more what I was expecting. Held in the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand, our host was the king of sequins, Julien Macdonald. He entered my consciousness in about 2001 for his tight bright dresses worn by the likes of Geri Halliwell. My invitation said cocktails at 7pm, but I was still in the queue for the bag search at 8pm, all to the thumping accompaniment of Kylie Minogue. I was intrigued by the hierarchies: celebs were whisked in, mere mortals had to queue. It was like being at the court of Louis XIV.

I had a standing-only ticket, but I muscled my way to a vacant seat next to Woman’s Hour’s Jenni Murray. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I asked her. ‘Writing an article called “What on earth am I doing here?’’ ’ she answered somewhat grimly. We sat there like two feminist bad fairies as the glamorous but gloomy-faced company assembled. Jenni pointed out Abbey Clancy on the front row opposite us, and we agreed that while the dresses were really pretty, the girls were far too thin. The dresses were like those that ballroom dancers wear, mainly nude mesh with handfuls of sequins strategically scattered across them.

‘Ooh, a little wobble there,’ I whispered, as yet another wraith pirouetted before us.

‘Inevitably, in those ridiculous shoes,’ was Ms Murray’s reply.

At the end Mr Macdonald came skipping forwards, smiling and tangerine, dressed all in black, to receive his applause. I don’t think that we were quite the target audience, but his was much more my idea of a fashion show, with crashes and booms and lights and high-octane glamour. And yet it still seemed to me to be a fairly joyless occasion. At least Mr Macdonald had grinned, and I did like his dresses.

The next day we headed to Fashion Week Central, the courtyard of Somerset House, for me to have my picture taken. I was by now unsurprised to see that it was packed with people photographing each other’s shoes. A young man approached, saying, ‘Mind if I take your photo, ladies?’ It turned out, though, that he wasn’t addressing me. He’d got his sights set on Jenny, my stylist for the day.

Determined to get my revenge, I swiped a pair of Prada sunglasses and a white satin Antonio Berardi swing coat from Jenny’s rail and started pulling ridiculous poses. I am told my new blunt fringe makes me look like ‘a young Anna Wintour’. Within 30 seconds, 30 cameras were trained upon me, and people started asking me to ‘talk them through my outfit’. It was all very silly and enjoyable.

Then it was off to The Savoy for the Temperley London show — sorry, ‘presentation’ seems to be the correct word. It was in a lovely ballroom, the music was relaxing, I was given some coconut water, and generally it all seemed to be my sort of thing. The celebrities here were rather up-market, too, including Joely Richardson and other English roses with straggly blonde hair.

When the dresses appeared, I seemed, miraculously, over three shows, to have got over the extreme thinness of the models and hardly noticed it. I believe that true fashion-istas might find Temperley a bit bland and bourgeois, but I spotted several outfits that I actively coveted: a beautiful blue silk dress with lace panels, and a posh-looking pashmina embroidered with cerulean Persian cornflowers. The beautiful, detailed, rainbow-hued embroidery reminded me of the 18th-century court dress that’s a highlight of our own collection. You even find it on gentlemen’s waistcoats for court wear. I actually began to relax and enjoy myself.

At the end I stayed in my seat while the crush subsided, and a nice American woman tried to sell me a handbag. I explained, as kindly as I could, that she was wasting her time.

‘Can I ask you an embarrassing question?’ she said confidentially. ‘Who is that woman over there in the black dress?’

I told her I didn’t know, but I wasn’t in any way embarrassed.

Regretfully, I have to conclude that Fashion People may not be My People after all.