London Fashion Week: Must it take a fire alarm to warm the ice queens hearts?

By Celia Walden Published: 7:07AM GMT twenty-six February 2010

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Natalia Vodianova Photo: Getty

Pity the bread waiters at London Fashion Week. I"ve seen contempt and I"ve seen hatred, but never so sharp a alloy of the dual being beamed, en masse, at one man and his basket.

Fashion Week, generally, is a flattering Arctic affair. In The Sep Issue, American Vogue editor Anna Wintour states with in contact with conviction: "People are fearful of conform since they are fearful or insecure, so they put it down… They feel in a little approach released or not piece of the "cool group". There is something about conform that can have people really nervous."

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What creates me shaken is how agonisingly uncertain the members of the "cool group" are. Hobbled by self-doubt and stupid shoes, they"re not only a frolicsome bunch. At a cooking this week, I was left to equate the vertebral column of a circuitously indication when, withdrawal their starters untouched, the total of my list vacated to the smoking patio for the residue of the meal.

But an situation at Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova"s Love Ball on Wednesday brought out the industry"s some-more warm side. Half an hour in to the event, the Camden Roundhouse began stuffing with fume and the 1,000-strong mob were evacuated. Once the primary shock had receded, the guests, together with Stella McCartney, Matthew Williamson, Kate Moss and Liz Hurley, embraced a Blitz spirit, violation out of their cliques and pity their jackets and Love-tinis with members of the proletariat. Put the conform universe in sub-zero temperatures, it turns out, and it warms up a bit.

* Add a handful of Russian minigarchs to the glacial companionship and you have what is well known in the commercial operation as "a difficult crowd". Something Ruby Wax hadn"t, perhaps, bargained for when she supposed an call in to compere at Vodianova"s ball, that was upheld by Harper"s Bazaar and dictated to lift income to set up playgrounds in Russia. Urging the artistic host to siphon her go by in "because you see similar to a fat pig", the comedienne marvelled at how Russians "who looked similar to lard on legs with a integrate of nostrils thrown in when I last went there", had managed to grow "cheekbones and legs by the perfect force of willpower".

The scowls became some-more assertive and fears grew that Wax would be found in a circuitously jump over the following morning, but she pulpy on regardless. "Just remember," she urged as the caviar was served, "that for each egg that goes in your mouths an additional kid won"t have a slide. Bon appetit."

* "God, I love this song," Pauline Prescott whispers in my ear as the lights low over the catwalk and the initial bars of Donna Summer"s Last Chance For Love begin up. We"re sitting side by side in the front row of Naomi Campbell"s Fashion for Haiti benefit, and I"m experiencing what can usually be described as a dizzying girl-crush on the former emissary budding minister"s wife. It initial took hold dual years ago when she eclipsed her father as the star of BBC2"s Prescott: The Class System, and roared behind in to hold up a couple of moments ago, when, fanning my face with those good Garbo lashes, Mrs Thumper confessed that Summer"s anthem "just creates me wish to get up and dance".

As models record down the runway, and the dash speeds up ("I need you, by me, next to me, to guide me, to hold me…"), I concede myself to trip in to a nightmare of Pauline and I pity a cylinder of Rocky Road as we watch re-runs of Friends; Pauline and I carrying the toenails embellished in relating coral pinks; Pauline and I brimful with selling bags, celebration Cosmopolitans; Pauline and I...

I spin to see at the preoccupied intent of my affection, right away clapping along and mouthing "Cause when I"m bad, I"m so, so bad," and consternation if those are tears in her eyes, but no it"s only the lashes.