Sun 24 Jan 2021 13.00 EST
I was on the Eurostar, somewhere between St Pancras and Paris, when a senior member of the Guardian team called and suggested that it might be a good idea for me to turn around at Gare du Nord and return to London.
It was 3 March 2020. This was not the plan. The plan had been to go to the Chanel show and report for the news pages. Instead, it was the beginning of all plans – work and otherwise – disintegrating.
2020 was a terrible year for the world, and a head-spinning one for fashion. Almost everything that could have unravelled did, from brands reneging on orders and shamefully leaving garment workers unpaid, to the cancellation of Hollywood red carpet events, to the nixing of fashion shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris.