London Fashion Week - Overheard at LFW

My neighbourhood, LFW Day 4

Somerset House square on a good day, finally

Watching people people watch

The crowds outside the show - tourists and peacocks rolled together

Hiding in Fernadez & Wells on a cold rainy day

Streetstyle photographers and some attention grabbing boots

Transporting some food backstage for Meadham Kirchoff 

London Fashion Week was an exhilarating experience, to say the least. There were so many things that made it so exciting and different from Singapore's Audi Fashion Festival or the Women's Haute Couture Fashion Week that is coming up in less than a week's time.

So here's Top 10 Observations from the LFW noobie:

1. I was first very intimated by the throngs of cool people parking themselves around Somerset House. Everywhere I looked, these people look cooler than me - I spotted people with hot pink and green ombre hair, a guy wearing a hat that was at least 50cm tall, and of course fashion insiders with understated designer outfits. 
2. Also, these cool people are outside Somerset House from morning till evening (6pm), when the last show for the day usually ends. Some of them may just be people who wants to be photographed and looking for a lucky break.
3. Even if you're not invited, you can queue up outside the shows and for backstage access and if you're lucky enough, they'll let you in! (at least true for the Topshop New Gen shows that took place in Regents' Park.
4. I got to experience the "fashion circus", as dubbed by Suzy Menkes, first hand. Streetstyle photographers were everywhere and I had people asking for my photo at least 4 times a day, not counting the many that snapped my photo without asking. 
5. Forget the comfy individual seats you have in Singapore, in LFW, everyone's seating on a bench. Including Front Row. 
6. Which also leads to point 5, once you're in a show, you won't really get checked and asked to see your seat number. But of course, as well-behaving, rule abiding Singaporeans, we seat at our allocated seats. 
7. Umbrella is a must!!! London weather is seriously so unpredictable, it can be having a thunderstorm one minute and then extremely sunny the next. And it also rains 5 -6 times a day. (Thank god the weather for this past week has been mostly sunny or cloudy. Praise the weather gods!)
8. People at fashion week do eat! The canapes at the Topshop Cafe included mini lemon tarts, raspberry tarts, prawns on skewers, Mediterranean salads and more...and these are always grabbed and gobbed up very very fast. 
9. Asian people all look the same to them. 
10. Finally, of course. The works from the young designers are particularly refreshing. On the Fashion East runway, Nike flip flops and Converse sneakers were paired with swimsuits or clothes inspired from woodland animals and paraded down the runway. Or sometimes, the models simply didn't wear any shoes. The atmosphere outside each show was just buzzing and there was this constant energy in the air - the mix of professional fashion editors, buyers and stylists, coupled with anxious PR girls and lots of young bloggers and what my friend here call 'wannabes', just make LFW much more interesting than that of Singapore's.