London | ameliaflorencesimmons

I am SO SORRY for being atrocious at posting lately. I got tangled up around Fashion Week and haven’t quite regained my footing until now. Someone even contacted me the other day to check if I was dead, so I knew it was probably time to post. Also, this weather is making me feel totally miz. I’m looking outside and can see a fat grumpy pigeon perched on the bare branches of the tree at the end of the garden while it rains on him, and that sort of sums everything up. I’m desperately in need of sun.

So what have I been doing with my life, I hear you demand? (Correction: I like to think I hear you demand. You’re probably just thinking about pigeons right now. You philistine.) I’d say in the month since I last posted, I’ve mostly been eating. I went up to St Andrews in February to judge the Alfa Romeo Young Designer Award for Lady M Presents, write up coming shortly. That was an awful lot of aceness. Also, I love Scotland, and I managed to resist doing my famously awful Scottish accent for the entire weekend, AND I didn’t even refer to anyone as the ‘Scotch’, as Stewart Lee is always getting people to do. Or quote any of this video.

The weekend after that, I went to the London outpost of the St Andrews Fashion Show, including dinner at Circus with the winners of the award. Circus is a unique concept: Pan-Asian cuisine served alongside…well, circus acts. And of course, we saw the St Andrews show again. Eating sushi while watching fire-eaters was a pretty fascinating way to spend an evening… On the whole, the food was delicious, the entertainment very absorbing, and we were shown into the venue by a man in a top hat and much more eye makeup than me, which is the way any good night should start.

It was great to see the designs on the catwalk again, and I’m still bowled over at the huge amount of hard work that must have gone into the organising of the show. I skipped out earlyish to get some much needed sleep, and also to eat plum jelly in my hotel room. Yep. That’s how I roll on a Friday night. Jelly roll. The next day, nursing a jelly hangover, I got taken to one of the most delightful restaurants I’ve been to in a very long time, which was The Delaunay, a charming place tucked away just off the strand. Beware the photo of the waffles I had, which can be seen in the pictures below. It has been known to induce fits of jealousy.

Then I went to Sketch, and back to Canteen, and to the wonderful Brasserie Zedel, and I made brunch, and sausage and mash…In fact, I really have been more or less eating non-stop for the last month, and having a rather wonderful time, all sorts of adventures and smiling non-stop, but I’m going to catch up with posts a bit at a time to avoid any essay length blogs. In the meantime, take a look at some pictures, why don’t you? And if you’re wondering where the title of this post comes from, I say firstly to you: get sum edukashun, yeh? And secondly, this.

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It’s the Monday after my first London Fashion Week, and I. Am. Shattered. What an absolutely incredible few days, though. I had no idea whatsoever about what to expect, but it was an unbelievable experience. Every day was absolutely rammed, going from show to show, stalking around on vertiginous heels, eating weird things at odd times, drinking bubbly sporadically throughout the day…There’s such a buzz all around London, this sort of surging energy that pulls you in.

I loved just standing in the Somerset House courtyard, in the sunshine (and rain), watching. I liked the kind of meta-voyeurism of watching people being watched. I liked the way the photographers moved like a shoal of fish, changing direction as some new important person walked into the arena. Before shows started, there would be a kind of stillness, a quietness. It felt a bit muffled, like when it snows. And then suddenly a spark would ignite somewhere, a sudden static energy rippling through the crowds, breaking the spell.

I didn’t think I was going to care about what I wore. I didn’t plan ahead, only for the first day, and that was only by lucky chance that I picked up something new to wear. Everything I’d read prior to attending said ‘don’t even worry – no one will be looking at you’. This is absolute RUBBISH. People look. The general public look at you as you leave the station and walk down The Strand. As you approach Somerset House, other LFW-attendees give you the look up and down. It’s just automatic, it doesn’t mark you out as special, it’s just an involuntary thing that most people in fashion do. A very quick sweep, feet up to hat.

With street style blogs and websites springing up everywhere, photographers are not simply there to snap a covert pic of Anna Wintour, or any of the other Frow-ers. I was surprised, when I first entered Somerset House, to feel someone grab my arm and ask if they could take a picture of me. It happened again subsequently, and it’s surprising how quickly you get used to holding a conversation, quickly turning to be snapped, then returning to the chat again. Also, once one photographer hauls you out to take a picture of you, others will follow suit. I’m not saying I was wearing anything particularly bizarre, fabulous, or attention grabbing – and I’m still convinced I’m going to spot myself on some blog under the title ‘What were they thinking? The worst of LFW’, but still. It was very flattering.

By Saturday night, my head was pounding. As we’d been at a lot of the up-and-coming, ‘one to watch’ shows, we were getting front row seats. You stare at a blindingly white catwalk, feel this pounding bass that seems to hit right into you, you smell a myriad of heavy, cloying perfumes. You drink fruity, sweet bubbly. The flash and click of cameras is endless. The heat of lights and bodies combine. It’s hypnotic and overwhelming.

What else, then? Well, Sunday morning we attended the British Fashion Council-hosted Estethica brunch. Estethica is a sort of collective, I suppose, formed of various ethical designers and trying to raise awareness of the impact of climate change on the planet. We grabbed bucks fizz and Bloody Marys, and sauntered around. I’ll do a write up on this properly soon, as some of the things we saw were absolutely mindblowing (dresses made from yak nipples, anyone?)

I have a huge thank you to make to Rachel Montague-Ebbs, who made the whole thing possible for me. I’ll be helping her with LFW coverage for her website, www.LadyMPresents.co.uk, as well as writing various ramblings in future. I never thought I’d get to attend such an amazing event, specially not this early in my writing ‘career’, and I’ll be eternally grateful for everything I’ve been given. Thank you so much, Rachel.

The other important thing is, I’m going to get a proper camera. No more crappy iPhone pics. That being said, there are some crappy iPhone pics in this post for your enjoyment.