Rebecca lowthorpe biography

Twenty-five Septembers ago was the first time I had to dress for a season of fashion shows. I was a junior reporter on a fashion trade magazine with no idea about anything except that it would help if I looked the part. So I asked a friend to cut my hair into a drastic pixie crop (like Christy Turlington, or so I thought) and packed everything in my wardrobe that was black. Back then, most of my invitations were stamped with a large ‘S’, meaning I was lucky enough to stand at the back and watch – in dingy car parks in London, floodlit arenas in Milan, palaces in Paris or subways in New York. It was the ’90s.

Grunge. Glamour. Wall to wall supermodels – Linda! Naomi! Christy! Claudia! Kate! – and designer superstars – Tom! John! Jil! Yohji! Gianni! Calvin! Karl! The more revered the designer, the harder it was to get into the show. Paris was the worst. It was almost impossible to get past the fashion gatekeepers