How London fashion week hastened my transition into my mother

Can I start by saying just how much I appreciate modern technology? Isn't live video streaming from London fashion week an absolute wonder? And do you ever wonder if you're turning into your mother? These two things are not unrelated. I'll explain.

London fashion week is all very well, you do it once and it's jolly exciting, but there are so many people and so much breathless tearing about, and the February one (A/W14) is nearly always wet and/or snowy and compulsorily cold. Unless you're an Important Person you have to wait in queues all the time, and then you don't get in anyway because they've over-invited and even if I do get in I'm too short to see more than the suggestion of an asymmetric hemline or an artfully dishevelled head. To tell you the truth, it's all a bit frustrating ... maddening actually. I'm middle-aged. I don't need to be doing all that, and video streaming means I don't have to. Please don't misunderstand me - I adore fashion week and wouldn't miss it for the world, but I just want someone to teleport me from venue to venue, usher me into a front-row seat and provide coffee or champagne as required. No waiting, no queuing, and no stiff neck from contorting myself around someone's massive Mulberry. And that's what video provides: fashion week at my desk, warm, dry, refreshments on tap, notebooks and computer handy and all only eight short steps from the loo - which is when I wonder if I'm becoming my mother.

I'm not, of course. I'm just being middle-aged and because I've seen it all before the actual being there seems rather unnecessary. It's not that I'm lazy, just practical, which is another thing that comes with middle age - a short process of weighing up inconvenience and discomfort against what I would be likely to gain from the experience, and whether or not it's worth it. What I want from London fashion week is to be able to see the design, cut, colour and fabric, how it moves and whether it will work for my age group. None of this is likely to be discernible from a viewing position behind someone's elbow. If I can't see it, how can I write about it? Middle age teaches you stuff like this, and very useful it is too. Which isn't to say that I pass on anything I might find mildly disobliging, but I'm pretty sure about what I like and don't like, and after seizing up solid on the Mall during the golden jubilee celebrations last year, I certainly know my limits.

Something I like very much is lines - straight lines, wriggly lines, dotted lines, parallel lines. A line is a fantastically useful thing because it can be directional and tell the eye where to look - such as this dress from Jaeger - or it can break up an outline and blur everything - such as this from Chanel.

Every season the catwalks are overflowing with lines of every description. The lines we can expect to see this spring and summer are what fashion journalists describe as 'painterly'. What they mean is daubs, blobs and scribbles arranged in a loosely line-based way, and in migraine-inducing swirls of colour - as many colours as possible.

This I don't like. It's too frantic and fiddly and makes me think of a Hyacinth Bucket organdie ensemble that's been got at by Miró. More importantly, it is in my view, almost impossible to make this work successfully on the middle-aged female form. Speaking for myself I'd feel altogether too conspicuous - both confused and confusing. I can do scribbles - scribbles are present on my beloved grey Vivienne Westwood dress. These scribbles are vertical mustard 'Vivienne' signatures over a thin red windowpane check. I love this dress and have written about it before - everything about it works and the button-through front has the buttons on crisp origami zigzag points, the line of which draws the eye beautifully to the curve of the waist.

It's the shape that's in charge here and not the squiggles, which serve to underline the design statement. It seems to me that putting design of the fabric over design of the clothes is a misstep frequently made in middle age, and one that is very hard to put your finger on when you study yourself in the mirror. Something feels wrong, but you're not quite sure what it is.

I wonder if the one of the reasons for this is the character expressed in the planes and lines of a middle-aged face. Anything busy about the body fights for attention. We, ourselves, must make the primary statement, backed up by our clothes, not overwhelmed by them. The other reason is that few of us possess, or are inclined to possess, the necessary slim and angular body. Middle age is uncooperative in this regard and anyway we're too busy doing other, more interesting, things, aren't we?