My 5 Most Awkward Fashion Week Faux Pas

Ah, London Fashion Week, that bi-annual event where all of the coolest, most stylish human beings congregate to get the latest need-to-know of what’s hot and what’s most definitely not. Whether it’s buyers for luxury department stores, editors of magazines, superstar bloggers, or peacocks just attending to get their picture snapped by some maj publication, the LFW crowd certainly drops Soho’s coolness barometer a few degrees for those few days twice a year. And that means one thing: be on your best (aka, least embarrassing) behaviour. When you’re a small-time fashion writer/blogger like myself, you’re a small fish swimming in a big, big pond of sartorially inclined sharks, and nobody wants to mess up, do something stupid, and utterly embarrass themselves in front of these sharks. At best, they’ll laugh at your fashion fail. At worst, they’ll be interviewing you for a job someday and remember you as that idiot that did something utterly idiotic. Unfortunately – as I’ve come to learn over the past few years – when you’re trying extra hard to not look like a fool, you often end up doing something that makes you look even more foolish (plus, being around people you think are far slicker than yourself only heightens the feelings of awkwardness) So here’s a run down of my top 5 fashion week faux pas, in all of their embarrassing glory. 

We rarely get the opportunity to be our most stylish selves in our regular 9-5 jobs. For many, fashion week gives an opportunity to dress up. A few years back when LFW was at Somerset House, I went and purchased lots of new jazzy items. In all of the excitement it seemed that I forgot to take off the tags of my new oversized navy jumper. 

A photographer approached me

“Excuse me…” they said.

Oh another person wants to take my photograph. Cool. Sure. Whatever. 

“Yes?” I said

“You’ve left the tag on your jumper” they replied.

I died. And not even in the fashion sense of the statement. I genuinely died. Of shame. Embarrassment. At least they had the decency to come up and tell me rather than snapping a candid shot of me blissfully unaware that I was donning my Topshop Boutique clothing tag like a necklace then selling it onto the Daily Mail for a LOL let’s laugh at the funny fashion people article. 

Similarly to number 1, fashion week can encourage us to wear slightly over the top clothing, experiment, and simply try out new things. Unfortunately, back in the early days when I didn’t realise that comfort is key to a sartorial success at LFW (and subsequently stopped caring about anyone taking my photo) I decided to wear some gargantuan chunky high heels. And because British Fashion Council like to hold fashion week at venues that have surprisingly uneven terra firma (erm, Somerset House cobbles, anyone?) my fashion week high came to an almighty fall as I quite literally stumbled right over. Painful in so many ways, I left with everything in tact – apart from my pride. That, alongside my arse, remained pretty bruised. 

There’s always people with cameras dotting about interviewing stylish looking people about their LFW experiences. Cue some YouTube entertainment news channel pulling me over to ask me what shows I was most looking forward to. Unfortunately, this was my first ever fashion week, so to say they caught me off guard is a bit of an understatement. I was attending shows on behalf of a random magazine which now ceases to exist so had very minimal knowledge of the designer world back then, so I simply blurted out the name on the invitation in my hand. Regrettably, in the panic, I switched two letters around and pronounced Bora Aksu as Bora Asku. Easy mistake to make, kind of. It was only when I took my seat in the show and the name was emblazoned up in lights that it hit me I had pronounced it so very wrong. Fail. 

 

Remember when the word on the street was that MAC’s Velvet Teddy was one of Kylie Jenner’s favourite lipsticks and they flew off the shelves quicker than you can say Lip Fillers? Well I had luckily got my hands on this hot property cosmetic. But whilst pulling my phone out of my bag at Somerset House, my lipstick flew out along with it at such speed it went hurtling towards the drain. And for that second it hit the drain cover, it was as if the whole of the courtyard went silence. And in slow motion I watched as it rolled and plummeted into the dirty, dark, watery grave below, making the biggest splash noise in the world that people turned around and stared. RIP Velvet Teddy.