If anyone finds themselves at the Mayfair hotel, can you please ask for my dignity? I left it in a queue to the London Fashion Week International Party. Having taken an oath of sobriety (from all narcotics), I decided that this was possibly going to be one of the…err… best evenings of my year; so I put the make up on, dug under the garden shed to find the heels, made the pants extra tight, brought out the empire line and double checked my RSVP print out.. This was after all fashion week and I wanted to get in. 

 

Note to self, unless you are a celebrity or the direct friend of the friend, always arrive two hours early and sit it out. Having flouted that rule; I together with my RSVP stood in the queue almost an hour and half; why, when the room we all so desperately wanted to be in was empty? I guess models don’t like overcrowding. 

 

Having decided my outfit was no longer able to support my being on two feet and getting frustrated by the one way convo to a man so obviously coked up that he was about to explode, I jumped out to ask the - oh so lovely boy - holding that clip board like he’s just won a BAFTA, what the hold up was. He informed me, and I quote, “all the important people are inside already so you are all more than welcome to stand with your guest list and what not”.  This lovely boy did not even finish that sentence before he gave me the industry smile, asked me to wait whilst a direct friend of the friend made her way inside, and then turned and left without any acknowledgment. I carefully picked my jaw off the floor and carried it back to the queue where my dignity unfortunately remained.

 

I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that I didn’t expect anything different or the fact that I saw size zero girls at a British Fashion Council Party. They being those who campaign against this trend of creating eating disorders. They who are trying to get such women barred from appearing on all catwalks around the world.  Yet, here they were being venerated above all credible journalists from respected publications, simply because they were the direct friends of the friend and perhaps for their tenacity at starving themselves. So, after meeting a journalist from an extensively read paper and declining his invitation to another fashion party (where we were more likely not to have our journalistic skills wasted) I casually slipped onto a 38 bus back East, where I left my green scarf.

 

If anyone finds themselves on that number, can you please ask for my scarf?

 

By Eva Toure