Whether you're a first timer or a veteran, you can almost set your watch by certain little things happening every season at London Fashion Week. How many do you recognise? LFW, we love you still...
1. Overdressed, over-the-top, super-pushy bloggers/vloggers barging their way to the front of the queue, name-dropping and trying to blag their way in to the show before plonking themselves on the front row. The shame.
2. Your phone battery dying just as you're about to get a totally Instagram-worthy shot at Ashish. And you left your charger at home. But of course. Schoolboy error.
3. The press lounge being monstrously overcrowded with no spare plug sockets when you only have an hour to file show copy. This kind of stress is how premature ageing happens.
4. If you're anything like me, you WILL get sick at some point. Tough love alert: take paracetomol, pack tissues and man up. It's only fashion week and it'll all be over faster than A-D Russo can click her jazzy Prada heels and scoot off to Milan.
5. You will get annoyed (read: jealous) at editors of glossies jumping in and out of chauffeur-driven cars before and after every show. Wearing this season's heel of choice. Well, because they can. Brogues for the rest of us though, yeah?
6. ...although, you'll be surprised at how many models you can spot on public transport if you really keep your eyes peeled, which sort of makes getting about London on the sweaty tube not so bad. Sort of.
7. It will rain. It will pour. It's London FFS. Yet, knowing this, you will forget an umbrella. Again. It makes no sense.
8. Propercorn and Lavazza become your new best friends. A short, sharp caffeine buzz and those salty little snacks are all you've got time for. Your raw/vegan/green juice diet goes out the window (and it's delightful for at least the first two days).
9. There will always be at least one fashion week enthusiast who has enjoyed perhaps one too many free proseccos (Scavi & Ray, since you ask) at after parties and is throwing seriously questionable shapes on the dance floor. Thank God there aren't photographers everywhere at fashion week! Oh wait...
10. You'll make tonnes of new contacts, friends, Twitter followers and have many a story to tell. LFW is exhausting and unpredictable, yet utterly enjoyable. Otherwise you wouldn't keep doing it now, would you?
This blog was originally published on WGSN Insider.