Jane Shilling: Why take a baby to a fashion show?

Beyonce, Kim Kardashian with daughter North and Anna Wintour attend the adidas Originals x Kanye West fashion show during New York Fashion Week. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

Just after Christmas I accidentally fed my old grey mare a clementine that had somehow infiltrated itself into a bag of apples. Her expression as she spat it out was the most eloquent distillation of disgust I have ever seen on the face of any living creature. Imagine Germaine Greer contemplating the fuchsia atrocity that is Labour's Woman to Woman campaign bus, and you have the general idea.

For some reason it was the affronted phiz of my dear old nag that came to mind when I saw the pictures of Anna Wintour, the editor of American Vogue, at Kanye West's New York Fashion Week debut show last week. Kanye, as you all know, is married to the reality star Kim Kardashian, and they have an 18-month-old daughter, North, who occupied the place of honour in the front row at her father's show, perched on her mother's knee and flanked by Wintour to the left and Beyonce to the right.

Possibly, the celebrity mite didn't care for the clothes (unforgiving flesh-coloured body stockings, mostly). At any rate she began to howl and had to be carried out by her mama while Wintour edged away with the expression of an elderly horse who has just bitten into a clementine.

When it comes to tantrums at fashion shows, North has form. She was photographed at Givenchy last September in a tiny see-through black lace frock and tears. Last weekend she was seen couture-clad and furious, squirming in her mother's arms at Alexander Wang. She could hardly make her views on fashion shows more clear. And yet her parents continue to inflict these penitential events on her - and her on them.

Anyone who has ever taken a toddler to a religious service, an art gallery or a restaurant knows about the astonishing hostility that small children can inspire in otherwise quite civilised grown-ups. Contrariwise, anyone who has tried to pray, concentrate on a picture or enjoy a meal in peace will be guiltily familiar with the surge of fury that rises at the sound of infant mewling.

At various times I have been both the mother of a fractious toddler and infuriated by other people's fractious toddlers, so I can sympathise with all the parties involved in that awkward New York catwalk drama.

Kim Kardashian and North West at the Givenchy show in September. Photo / Getty Images

There is a school of thought, popular in our grandparents' day and currently undergoing a fashionable revival in fogeyish parenting circles, that boredom is character-forming for small children. Obliging the young to accommodate themselves to the grown-up world, the argument goes, encourages creativity, humility, good manners and a certain spirit of mild subversion - all helpful traits in the grown-up world.

If you take this view, then the decision to take a toddler to a fashion show and seat her next to the editor of Vogue looks slightly less eccentric. Little North has been born into a clan with every advantage in life but privacy, and her parents have evidently concluded that she may as well get used to it. (Either that, or they regard her as an animated designer accessory. But let's hope not, eh?)

However we try to form them, our children invariably grow up to disoblige us. As a teenager, North will doubtless loathe fashion and long only to pursue her passion for ornithology in peace. Still, you can't blame her parents for trying to pass on what they know. It's what we all do. Only most of us have the sense to take along a favourite storybook and a comforting old teddy on these character-forming outings.