With eyes bulging and bones rattling, a drunken praying mantis jerks past

Eye witness: London Fashion Week, and the rag trade is in defensive mood

She smiles. The beautiful young woman from Jasper Conran is dressed in expensive black clothes, like all her colleagues. She hands over the card as if it were an invitation to a secret tryst, rather than the company show. She smiles as I wipe sweat from my brow after climbing the staircase to the Conran office, just off the King's Road in Chelsea, and her look seems to say that I, too, can belong in this hip young world of hers. The casual half-smile may even be a smirk but it makes the eager puppy of my subconscious sit up and beg. It must mean she likes my shirt. Maybe I am cool. Maybe we could go out for a drink with all her cool friends and talk about cool things ...

"OK then? Bye."

Whoops. Got carried away. I am dismissed, back down the stairs feeling embarrassed and angry with myself. And that's the problem with the fashion industry – you know it's frivolous, irrelevant to anything you care about, full of self-obsessed dahlings who think the most important thing in the world is a Prada handbag, and you can almost pity them, then somebody smiles or says they like your shoes. Suddenly you're saying, "Really? These old things? I know this little place ..." when the truth is they're from Clarks. Pathetic. But entirely natural.

They rely on the power of vanity and the urge to belong, these people who hold the guest lists that get you into London Fashion Week. First, you have to pass security guards in blazers who stand by the entrance to the event's new home in the Duke of York's Headquarters. Negotiate the gang of young women at registration, all in black, and you are free to wander claustrophobic aisles inspecting bags, hats and skirts, and listen to foreign buyers being sarcastic in their own languages. British designers sell £650m worth of clothing a year, two-thirds of it overseas.

There are 137 stands, but getting to look at them does not mean you're really in. For that you need an invitation to one of the 44 catwalk shows, which will entitle you to join a queue outside the British Fashion Council Tent, where Jasper Conran is scheduled to begin in five minutes. Punctuality has never been fashionable, of course, so a couple of hundred people are herded into a small lobby, with the sun streaming in and the temperature rising fast. Pink invitations flutter like fans as an elegant man with beautifully cut silver hair waves a card he believes entitles him to a free drink. He is appalled to be charged £9 for a glass of fizz and a bottle of water. The waiter shrugs.

"Are you used to this?" asks a woman next to me, who is wearing a fetching lime blouse and a bemused look. This is her first time at a fashion show. "There are fewer good-looking women here than I expected," she says. "Nobody I would really aspire to look like."

My new friend describes herself as a customer of Jasper Conran and a friend of his sister. Together we survey jeans that bulge in the wrong places, orange tans, and women who look as if they're going to a fancy dress party as their own daughter. "If these are the people writing in magazines and telling us what to wear, then heaven help us."

Then Darcey Bussell the prima ballerina drifts past in a Conran skirt, adding poise. As we finally take our seats, an hour late, I see an actress from EastEnders and a short, square woman with hair rolled up in a quiff. She is apparently very influential, and has a front-row seat.

Music signals the start as a model struts towards us in a little black dress. They keep coming for half an hour: down the catwalk with eyes fixed on the bank of photographers, a coquettish smile, and a turn of the heel. How ugly some of the women are close up, with their bulging eyes, stooping shoulders, and rattling bones. One exaggerates every step, leaning back on her hips and jerking forward like a drunken praying mantis.

Next to me, a fashion writer dressed in black writes in large, careful letters, "Seductive", underlined twice. I look up to stare at the models, trying hard to see what she means. The clothes are nicely cut, even I can see that – the pleated chiffon swings, the shiny suit material hugs the washboard torso of the hunky boy with tousled hair – but they don't exactly seduce. Sit there and make polite conversation over a pot of tea, yes, but rip your shirt off and get down to it behind the sofa? No.

The show finishes abruptly with a little wave from Jasper in his white suit and we file out, to queue for the next. An American woman phones the office: "Very pretty, I guess." Not a gushing review.

The show everybody wants tickets for is Julien Macdonald on Saturday night. The 28-year-old some people call the Welsh Versace has been having a difficult time as creative director at Givenchy, but his glitzy clothes may give a lift to an otherwise understated week. London swapped dates with New York to avoid having the circus in that city on 11 September, and this, coupled with the world economic downturn, has put the industry in a mood of self-restraint. Designers and buyers on the stalls in Chelsea were sheepish or apologetic in describing their activities to an outsider, despite the fact that 135,000 people are employed making clothes in this country.

Even Julien Macdonald, whose glamorous creations provide a cheerful diversion from the prevalent hippie peasant look, sounds a bit downbeat. "Not everybody likes what I do, even though I really like what I'm doing," he says. "Some people take it all too seriously. It's not about saving lives."

Additional reporting by Jamie Huckbody