The other day I was having breakfast with Ivana Omazic, the very chic Croatian designer of Celine (no one is a better advertisement for the power of a perfectly cut black pencil skirt, black blouse and cardigan), and she was telling me about the kind of national differences you have to consider in fashion. “With America, you always have to think about the fact they have the thinnest feet,” she said. “Asians have the widest. In Hong Kong, everything needs to be relatively light, as it never gets too cold. In Korea, it’s all fur, fur, fur.”

This made me pause. I can accept the idea that Koreans, like Russians and other Slavs, have a more intimate relationship with fur than the rest of us given their climate issues, but it increasingly seems to me that the rest of us are catching up. I looked furtively around Claridges, where we were drinking grapefruit juice (well, I was; Ivana was having a double espresso as per her morning beauty ritual). Right in the heart of the most anti-fur country left on earth, I counted at least six mink/rabbit/fox coats or accessories: a good third of the room.