Old menswear types love nothing more than to map the downward spiral of mankind onto the number of people who watch fashion shows through their phone screens (see also: gigs) rather than just 𝓵𝓲𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓲𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓸𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 and using the iPhones in their skull. But some of us need to get TikTok content and we don’t have the luxury of sitting there and staring at the clothes with our mouths a little bit open. Plus, having an iPhone to hand (the bigger the better) is one of the most useful items to keep in a fashion week arsenal: you can use it to write fake emails in order to avoid speaking to the person next to you, and you can also use it to write fake emails in order to avoid looking like you have no one to speak to. 

Being umbilically connected to a mobile phone helps you to live in the moment because your brain isn’t cluttered with thoughts like ‘why are my legs crossed, I should uncross them before someone sees’ and ‘should I be smiling because I like this collection or looking serious because I’m thinking about this collection’. These kinds of absurd anxieties are the punchline of a recently resurfaced Absolutely Fabulous episode that is literally nowhere on YouTube or Netflix. The clip features some of the most astute parodies of fashion people, like when Patsy tells Suzy Menkes that Miuccia Prada is “a very good friend” and that she has to hold Mrs Prada’s hand backstage at her shows. That doesn’t seem to impress Menkes, though, because she soon chastises Patsy for wearing black-out shades indoors. A mortified Patsy then starts to maniacally sketch each look as it appears on the runway which leads to her experiencing a mini psychic break: her quiff slumps with every jagged pencil line, she reaches for a dress, she collapses onto the catwalk. 

Menkes, meanwhile, is writing a review on a miniature laptop (pager? IDK, too old) while others are scribbling into little notepads. Some journalists who do not need to capture social media content will still freehand their thoughts into a ye olde notebook, which makes them look intelligent even if what they’re writing is complete nonsense – but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to work out who’s doing that because they are old and who’s doing that because they think it might make them look more interesting and chin-strokey. I personally jot everything down with this so that everyone in the room knows the level of intellectual integrity I have at my disposal. Anyway, good luck finding this particular Ab Fab episode online (it’s called The Last Shout: Part One if that helps) and re-watch the archive clip above.