A night at Malta Fashion Week starts about two days prior for me… When I start panicking about what to wear. “I literally have nothing,” I’d cry down the phone to a friend, “this is going to be a disaster!”

As I try to deal with my first world-problems, I start physically going through every single item of clothing I own. As the pile of things I’ve not been seen in gets smaller and smaller, my brain starts wandering to distant worlds where random combinations are the order of the day. It’s usually at this point that I call my florist about foliage to place in a backpack or my antiques dealer about that għonella he posted about earlier that morning.

As the outfit comes together, I take a deep breath and think: ‘Right, this might make me a laughing stock or a legend, so I guess it works.’

Finally, the day arrives and I spend hours plucking every hair and unclogging every pore – until, finally, I am picked up and I can no longer stand in front of a mirror. Getting to St Elmo, the experience starts with the familiar 30-minutes-looking-for-parking charade, because that is how we live now. And it’s at this point that I thank the heavens that I always go early to the shows.

The night begins by hitting the bar for some liquid courage to help me deal with the masses… And this is where you’ll find many of the famous names who will end up sitting in the FROW. I guess that is the conundrum of our generation: How can we be so bubbly on social media and yet be so socially awkward in real life?

As we are ushered to our seats, we’re bound to accidentally hit someone with one of the random accessories we have on. (Why do you have a palm leaf in your eye? Oh, crap, sorry, that must be from my bag!) We’ll stop every three steps to air-kiss like we haven’t seen each other in years, and pose for selfies and Boomerangs every 10.

But, ultimately, we all fall silent as the real stars of Malta Fashion Week finally make an appearance… The clothes! Some we love, while others we don’t get – either way, the show is always worthwhile, giving us new ideas for outfits and things to discuss in between shows or as we head out of the venue, admittedly slightly less glamorously than we walk in with aching feet or a deconstructed outfit (hey, I do that every year).

All that has become something I absolutely love. In fact, I’m kicking myself this year as I won’t be able to attend any. And I’m absolutely heartbroken about it – so make sure you head there instead of me!

Photos Kurt Paris, Mark Soler, Gordon Formosa