Glamour, excess and sex appeal are the key to the Italian look, says Susannah Frankel. Photographer Martino Lombezzi went backstage at Milan Fashion Week earlier this month to capture the action

Jimmy Choo, the luxury shoe-maker, is to expand into selling clothing as part of its rapid brand expansion as it celebrates 15 years in the business.

When it comes to attending the international shows, anyone who says they don't care what they wear is either lying or has a wardrobe worthy of Paris Vogue's Carine Roitfeld. Every season, more attention gets paid to the fashion crowd's ensembles, and with style bloggers swarming outside the shows, judging one's outfits like camera-wielding Simon Cowells, even the most carefree dresser can get panic-struck. My tactic is to play it safe with a nod to current trends, black and classics – this season offers the perfect cover for anyone who secretly loves a uniform – but at Milan Fashion Week it struck me that this was a rather joyless strategy.

It wasn't just the Marilyn image that Andy Warhol made so famous but the humble black biker jacket too. And Italian fashion group Benetton will be raising money for the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh when it launches its black-jacket exhibition this week.

Non-fashion people (as the rest of the world is known during the microcosmic bubble of weirdness that is the international collections) never seem to believe that going to shows is hard work. Well, it is. And actually it's not just the late nights, early mornings and traversing a city six times before lunch – it's also the stress of what the hell to wear.

Anna Wintour has placed a Louboutined heel on yet another rung of the Establishment ladder.

It wasn't just the champagne cocktails, celebrity-filled front rows or, indeed, the clothes on the catwalks that kept the demanding audience of London Fashion Week entertained yesterday.