And when you simply must get into the show...

However many tickets have been produced for the first Galliano- for-Givenchy show, there will be twice as many in circulation by Sunday afternoon. Ticket forging (and ticket stealing) is endemic in the fashion world, as those who want to get into the shows - even if the designers do not want them - will go to any lengths.

Even respectable fashion editors from respectable newspapers carry a battery of pens, sticky dots and gold and silver stars in order to upgrade their tickets. But the forgers go much further. John Galliano once issued a burnt and tattered piece of paper, like a pirate's map to hidden treasure, as the ticket to a ready-to-wear show in Paris. One keen fashion victim spent an afternoon rubbing a precise mixture of coffee and tea on to white paper, lightly toasting it under the grill, then replicating the copperplate script. She got in.

When, last season, Galliano issued a piece of chalky paper stuffed into a child's ballet slipper as his ticket, another keen fashionite, without said slipper or a clue to the whereabouts of ballet suppliers in Paris, had a friend shop for tiny dance shoes and rosin (the chalk ballerinas use) from Gandolfi in London and express-mailed them over.

On the other hand, designers go to some lengths to counter forgery. Origami tickets were popular until the designers realised they had underestimated the ingenuity of the fashion pack. The only time all interlopers have been successfully excluded was the time when Chloe (where the designer is Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld) issued swipe cards and installed magnetic barriers at all entrances. But it was a pyrrhic victory. The venue was half-empty and the atmosphere was about as charged as a wet fish stall. The next season, a ticket a five-year-old could forge was issued and the show had a buzz once more.

Those without the master forger's art try chutzpah. One trick is to approach a "cravat rouge", one of the red tie-attired guards who control the portals of every Paris fashion show, waving any old scrap of paper and announce grandly, "Helas! Mon billet est perdu." Ninety-nine times out of 100, this works. Other tricks are to sneer, "I'm a model in the show" (this does not work if you are under 6ft tall or suffering from acne), or "I'm the boyfriend of Shalom/Amber/Carla." This second tactic fails if one chooses Claudia Schiffer unless, of course, one is unfortunate enough to look like her beau, David Copperfield. One gay fashionite finds the model girlfriend works wonders: if he tries it on a young, straight "cravat rouge", the guard is likely to be flummoxed for just long enough for him to slip past; and a gay "cravat rouge" is likely to sneer "really?", raise an eyebrow and stand aside.

If all else fails, said fashion victim joins the back of the line, picks a different entrance and employs the "I seem to have lost my ticket in the bottom of my bag" trick. It is staggering how many times she or he not only gets in but sits, beaming, next to Sly Stallone, Elton John, Julie Andrews or Joan Collins right in the front row.

MARION HUME