I’ve spent most of my life dreaming of attending London Fashion Week.

I can chart my obsession with the catwalk back to poring over trend reports in my favourite magazines as a pre-teen. I would scrapbook IRL mood boards (how renaissance of me), choose the street style looks I’d emulate for the months ahead and identify every talked-about moment, carrying them with me like a precious heirloom and giving my analysis to any friend who’d listen. Back in 2008, you wouldn’t have been able to get me off the subjects of Harry Styles’s new mullet, Charli’s club-rat hedonism and the three shades we’ll all be wearing for spring/summer.

It all felt so wildly different from life as I knew it in a sleepy Midlands village, and I was equally obsessed with the artistry of the designs that wafted down the catwalks as I was by the starry-eyed exclusivity of it all. So when I got the chance to attend some of the spring/summer 2025 shows at London Fashion Week’s 40th birthday, feigning nonchalance took some work.

In a bid to chart my experience as a first-timer at fashion week, here are 20 thoughts I had that chronicle what really goes on behind the impenetrable facade of the aviator-clad front row…

20 thoughts I had while attending my first London Fashion Week shows