Dressful

The invitation to Ashish's Autumn/Winter 2013 show at London Fashion Week showed an image of workers on a construction site. Sometimes fashion show invitations act as a sneak peek into the collection, and sometimes they're completely abstract, but the photo on Ashish's invitation was as far from catwalk glamour as you could imagine. Or so it seemed.

As soon as the first model emerged on the catwalk under Somerset House's big tent, donning a neon yellow visibility jacket, it became clear that the Indian-born designer took inspiration from the very same workwear pictured on the show invitation.

What separated this jacket from the one you'd put on when your car went kaput on the road was that it was entirely made of Ashish's signature sequins.

Continually inspired by urban London life, Ashish has a penchant for reworking everyday pieces you see in the streets into catwalk looks. Last season he put models in white Reeboks, recalling the contemporary metropolitan woman who walks to work in running shoes and puts on expensive high-heeled pumps at her desk. The neon jackets in the Autumn/Winter 2013 collection echoed road workers as much as London cyclists driving in the morning fog.

In line with the high visibility theme, most looks featured silver reflective stripes. Ashish's 'Working Girl' wore baggy jumpers with large plastic pockets (handy for keeping tools), wide patchwork denim garments, slouchy jackets, even an apron (presumably for mixing mortar). But there were also London party girl's new clothes: windowpane check ponchos trimmed in fringe, holographic frocks, and sleek spaghetti-strap overalls covered in innumerable sparkling sequins.

Cleverly, Ashish kept the number of neon visibility pieces to three and conveyed his point through less flashy reflective stripes instead. Anything more and the collection would risk becoming a caricature of itself. Most importantly, Ashish's catwalk adaptation of ordinary workwear and obnoxious hi-vis garments can be understood globally. After this collection, you'll no longer be able to pass traffic cones without a smile.

Photos from Style.com.

Korean-born designer Eudon Choi turned to Russian folklore for the inspiration for his Autumn/Winter 2013 collection, mysteriously titled Varykino.

Playful folkloric elements such as peasant blouses, vivacious oversized babushkas by milliner Piers Atkinson, and wide calf-length skirts were toned down by sombre black leather and heavy brocade. Several black ensembles were festooned with a mix of hot pink and red sequins that injected a dose of modernity into the collection.

While the pieces based on Russian traditional clothing were as fresh as anything at London Fashion Week, leather garments in dark colours felt restrained, recalling a whole different period of Russia's history – the Soviet Union.

The highlight of the show were headpieces consisting of bright flowers and large pom-poms, which also appeared on shoes. Eudon Choi's girl was dainty and romantic literally from head to toe.

Photos from Vogue.com.

Fyodor Golan was the first show I attended at London Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2013. Designers Fyodor Podgorny and Golan Frydman described their collection as a coming-of-age story inspired by Luis Buñuel's cult 1967 film Belle de jour, starring Catherine Deneuve.

The Belle de jour inspiration was largely unrecognisable because the intricate pieces full of contrasts and a cantata playing in the background suggested something else: baroque. The show opened with short white dresses decorated with large, sharp abstract black prints, evoking the Spanish Inquisition. There were wide black chokers, stern jackets with oversized lapels, and folds creating unexpected shapes (from the back, they looked like small wings).

The collection vacillated between eveningwear and no-nonsense daytime pieces. However, sleek gowns exposing the shoulders told a different story than simple knitwear in burnt-orange.

Everyone in the audience whipped out their phones at the sight of a large round mask covering the model's whole face – a nod to Fyodor Golan's Spring/Summer 2013 collection, which featured large architectural hats by milliner Zara Gorman. The headdress felt slightly out of place in this show, but made for a great Instagram moment.

Though the collection lacked cohesion, I appreciate that Fyodor Golan is emerging with its own identity instead of knocking off Nicolas Ghesquière's Balenciaga, which seems to be all the rage wherever you look these days.

Photos from Vogue.com.

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P.S. The show I had been looking forward to the most yesterday was Jean-Pierre Braganza, one of my favourite young London designers. After queuing for half an hour, they turned about 70 people away because the venue had reached full capacity, though we had invitations. The same thing happened this morning at the Clements Ribeiro show, so unfortunately I'll be unable to publish as many show reviews as I had intended.

The next London Fashion Week, showing collections for Autumn/Winter 2013, begins on Friday. What do you need if you're attending fashion week as a journalist?

1. Bright, stylish notebook (Lanvin, £40) for jotting down first drafts of show reviews and overheard conversations about how wearing your jacket over the shoulders makes you look like a fashion editor. I prefer writing things down to using a voice recorder; hurrying to finish your article on time, you rarely have time to rewind the recording back and forth.

2. I'm a big advocate of flat shoes (Christopher Kane, £605) for fashion week. Major fashion weeks involve so much standing and walking that high heels crush your feet faster than you can say 'Mary Katrantzou' (and if you don't know how to say it, here's how). Six-inch pumps are viable when you're a top editor who has her own driver and doesn't have to queue to get into shows, but everyone else ends up doing a shoe switcheroo at some point in the day. There are few worse fashion faux pas than exposing your swollen feet in public.

3. Sleek ballpoint pen (Montblanc, £280). No smearing, please.

4. Mid-size shoulder bag (Anya Hindmarch, £1,195) will keep your arms free, convenient for taking notes. It's not huge, so there's less chance you'll overstuff it with things you won't need.

5. Since your fashion week mission is to write about shows, not pose for street style photographers bare-legged and shivering in sheer spring blouses, you might as well keep warm. If the current snowy rain and cold continue into fashion week, a scarf (Alexander McQueen, £135) is your best bet against winds, draughts, and possibly air condition (you never know).

In the interim after my last update I moved to London and attended London Fashion Week for the first time. Fashion week has been the same as the rest of them, only a tad less frenetic. I'm still settling in, so my participance has not been in line with my usual demeanour, but it was profound enough to discover that any and all fascination with fashion week I used to harbor is gone for good.

This is my fourth fashion week season and my ninth fashion week (résumé: 3x Milan, 3x Paris, 2x New York). If there's a good time to become disillusioned about any part of the fashion industry, it's before you decide to invest time and money into studying a fashion-related discipline – possibly in another country – that might or might not result in getting a Job. Last season in Paris (my most successful fashion week so far), my sixth sense paid me an unexpected visit, whispering I was never again going to be as excited about fashion week as I had been until then. The novelty had worn off – it would have sooner or later – but I loved fashion no less. Two days after I had returned home from Paris, I sent off my application to London College of Fashion.

It's possible that the feeling I had in Paris was a culmination of my previous fashion week experiences. I also see it now as a forecast for London. The reason I can't be enamored with fashion week any more is that in the last couple of days I've been feeling as though because my primary interest is the new collections, I don't belong there. What matters at fashion week right now is the theatrics.

Somerset House is cramped with people who aren't attending shows, they just pose for street style photographers dressed like a lunatic (of course such attention seeking happens at every fashion week, but London has it down to a tee, not in the "true British eccentric" Daphne Guinness way). Then there's the waiting, always the waiting, and the air conditioning in the BFC Tent that gives you crushing headaches, and the 18-hour workdays, and the security guards who refuse to acknowledge anything but hard-copy invitations, and the hierarchical separation of show attendees. I eavesdrop on fashion people's conversations; black-clad attendees observe that people are wearing jackets over the shoulders because they think it makes them look like an editor. They sigh when they remember they have to attend six more events today and they've already ditched the high heels. As a rule, evaluations of collections do not span beyond "Hey, did you like [insert show]?" "Yeah, it was great."

This anecdote summed (London) Fashion Week theatrics up for me: I waited outside of the Tent for the Issa SS13 show on Saturday; a smiling girl was handing beautiful limited edition Meadham Kirchhoff tote bags to everyone in the queue. At the entrance a security guard looked at my invitation, telling me the queue I had been standing in was for guests with seats and I should go to the standing room queue (the previous show I had attended at the Tent had one queue for both seats and standing room). I went to the other side of the Tent and noticed that none of the guests with standing room tickets had been given Meadham Kirchhoff totes.

After three seasons and eight fashion weeks, what's different about my experience now is that in the past, every season I attended (at least) one brilliant show that made it all worth it, overriding the mishaps (truth be told, because of collections and clothes, because of actual Fashion, ultimately I will always choose to overlook the mishaps). This season was the first time I haven't had luck, but considering I've only attended one fashion week as opposed to the usual three, it's not something to get worked up about. I'll be happy to give London Fashion Week a second chance in February. And because it never hurts to be polite, I hope it gives me another chance, too.