‘Shut up and come here. Strip.’

The model pulled off her T-shirt and stepped out of her sweatpants. She was naked underneath.

‘Right. Stand still.’

Isabelle put her hands up inside the dress and dropped it over the model’s head. Thank God – it fitted around the shoulders. It was a little loose around the waist, and the drop was too long.

‘Scissors.’

Will handed her a huge pair of fabric shears. They whooshed through the fabric – one, two, three, and a hoop of purple satin fell around the model’s ankles.

‘Walk up and down. Hmmmm. You’ll do. Bulldog clip.’

Will handed her a clip, and she cinched in the waist. The offcuts she fashioned into a belt, tied in a bow at the back. From the front, at least, the dress looked as if it had been modelled specifically to the girl’s body – and, if it wasn’t hemmed at the bottom, that could be put down to a stylistic innovation.

‘Now for Christ’s sake don’t breathe out. You understand?’

The model nodded, giggled, and was sent off to join the ‘readies’. The rest were all changed now; Will was making the final adjustments.

One dress remained – the jewel of Isabelle’s collection, a violet chiffon gown split to the hip, scooped low at the bust and tightly tailored at the waist, designed specifically for Amelie Watts, the up-and-coming catwalk star who was supposed to have been Isabelle’s passport to glory.

But Amelie was not there, and the gown was.

‘Where the fuck is she,’ moaned Isabelle, choking down a scream.

‘Oh, I saw her,’ said one of the models, a porcelain-skinned blonde with an unexpected Geordie accent. ‘She was hanging out with Maya Rodean.’

‘Shit!’ The word exploded simultaneously from Isabelle’s and Will’s lips.

Maya Rodean – the bane of their lives, their bête noire, the daughter of superwealthy rock star Rocky Rodean, who had sailed through Central St Martins with little talent and a big name. Maya Rodean, who hogged the press attention for the graduate shows, who was putting her second-rate designs on the back of some of the biggest names in the modelling world, who could afford show producers who were more at home with Versace, McQueen, McCartney. Maya Rodean, who was already rumoured to be signing a deal with one of the big Paris houses before she’d shown a stitch, whose clumsiness on the cutting table had earned her the nickname The Shredder.

Well, if Amelie Watts had defected to Maya Rodean, so be it. The show was fucked. Weeks of careful planning had all gone to ratshit. Yes, she could change the dresses around, stick one of the other models in the violet chiffon, brief the tech team to change the lighting script, the music . . . And look forward to a lifetime of fashion obscurity, picking up crumbs from the great woman’s cutting table, her only claim to fame being that she went to St Martin’s with Maya Rodean. The Shredder.