What is fashion? What is fashionable? Who decides what's in and what's out? Why is it green one year and blue the next? Why is one little black dress worth five thousand dollars and another worth fifty? Is the catwalk really that catty? What makes a supermodel so super?

And a designer too hot to touch? Who is making money? Who owns whom? Who hates whom? And who's in each other's pockets? The answers are all to be found in Fashion Babylon.

Taking the reader through six months in a designer's life, it explains how a collection is put together -- from the objects of inspiration to the catwalk, into the shops and, hopefully, onto the cover of a magazine. It examines who goes to the shows and where they sit...and whose backside they have to kiss to get there. Narrated from the point of view of an anonymous A-list British fashion designer looking to break out across the pond and structured around three of the annual "must" industry events in London, Paris and New York, this irresistible work of reportage goes inside the well-cut seams of the fashion world, where women are paid tens of thousands of dollars for simply getting dressed and where a wrong skirt length can cost you your career.

Fashion Babylon decodes the markups and the comedowns, the fabulous extremes and the shoddy shortcuts behind one of the most lucrative and secretive businesses in the world. Witty, naughty and packed with celebrity gossip, this book will forever change the way you peruse the racks at Bergdorf's or flip through the pages of Vogue.