Meet the VIBS* (Very Important Babies)

Wow, that’s like the perfect accessory,’ said the blonde in a black mini-shift dress guarding the portals of Holly Fulton’s S/S 2013 fashion show.

My daughter, Minna, nine months old, has never been described as an accessory before, but I wasn’t about to start arguing: I had got past the clipboards, with a live baby strapped to my front!

Babies do not generally appear on the front rows of fashion shows. High fashion and babies are like oil and water, or opposing magnetic poles, they do not mix, they do not meet; at times it feels like they exist in separate quantum universes. High fashion is all about fabrics so delicate they must be kept between many layers of tissue, shoes so impractical they are only good for displaying in museums and women with hips so narrow they look like they couldn’t birth a dormouse. Babies, on the other hand, are fat and messy and have no idea who Karl Lagerfeld is.

That is, until Harper Beckham came along. Fourteen months old, dressed in a pristine white broderie anglaise dress with her hair in a punky topknot, she ruled New York Fashion Week, appearing on her mother’s knee next to Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman at the Victoria, Victoria Beckham show and getting more attention than the clothes themselves.

Harper’s fashion debut coincided with the publication of Carine Roitfeld’s new magazine CR Fashion Book (and the birth of Carine’s granddaughter Romy). Those acquainted with Roitfeld’s oeuvre while editor of Paris Vogue might have expected models in leather bras wielding flick knives, but instead the magazine featured models in Givenchy pushing prams, models holding babies, pregnant models… The consensus is clear. Babies are in.

And so here I was, waiting in the sunshine outside the Holly Fulton show, on a mission to discover whether the fashion cognoscenti really would embrace a baby to their scant bosoms. I had put in a couple of ticket requests in advance and been turned down (‘I’m afraid we are unable to accommodate this,’ commiserated Roksanda Ilincic’s PR), so decided to wing it. For the most part people were friendly, if a little wary. One rather grand older lady kindly informed me that I had dropped my invitation while I was in the middle of feeding Minna a bottle of formula milk, but was shocked when I asked her to pick it up for me. Diana Vreeland never had to put up with this!

Inside the show space, we were shown to the front row where we were soon joined by Gemma Arterton and her husband Stefano Catelli, who seemed delighted to have his beard pulled by Minna while Gemma was photographed by the paparazzi (this was the only time Minna cried, not because of Catelli’s beard, but the bright, popping lights). Jane Shepherdson, the CEO of Whistles, seated to my right, was equally welcoming and didn’t seem at all concerned that Minna might smudge her smart leather top with grubby, questing little fingers.

In fact, the show proved to be perfect infant entertainment. Fulton’s presentation was all zingy Art Deco pastels and leather espadrilles, played out to a Paul Simon soundtrack. Colourful, bright and over in less than 20 minutes — Minna didn’t even have the time to get grouchy. I wasn’t intending to subject her to a full day of shows, but we did cruise on down to Somerset House, passing a troupe of models in neon tube dresses, to catch Todd Lynn. We were late, but I discovered that far from being a hindrance, babies can be a fashion passport. The portly gentleman who had just closed the doors took one look at us and relented, with the warning that the noise levels within exceeded those recommended by the EU. The show was dark and ominous with booming, jittery techno and girls dressed in black leather. I put my hands over Minna’s ears and she fell asleep at once — Lynn’s spare, brooding aesthetic was clearly not her bag.

In many respects the exercise had been a success. Minna had attended her first fashion shows and had even made friends with Gemma Arterton. I had proved that babies are the new black, and we can all expect to see Anna Dello Russo wearing one on her head very soon. If there was any failing, it was mine. Fashion show FROW-ers (front row regulars) are required to look as stylish and directional as the models themselves. With Minna as an accessory I presumed I was exempt from this diktat — what is the point in wearing something presentable only to have it smeared in fruit-based gunge? So I had worn my ‘normal’, dowdy clothes and found myself entirely out of place among the immaculate women in purple pencil skirts and jackets constructed out of plush soft toys.

Fashion people look fabulous in the most adverse conditions. Even with Harper on her knee, Victoria Beckham’s make-up was perfect, her khaki mini-dress spotless and Walter Steiger wedge-heeled shoe-boots sky-high. Roksanda Ilincic may not have wanted me at her show, but she always manages to look ethereal in jewel-coloured chiffon, even with her toddler Efimia in tow. Jess Cartner-Morley, fashion editor of The Guardian, was also on the front row at Holly Fulton, with her daughter Pearl, six, on her knee and high-heeled gold sandals on her feet. ‘I was back at work and at Paris Fashion Week when Alfie, my first baby, was seven months old, and took him to a couple of shows. I remember Yves Saint Laurent was an early favourite,’ she told me.