Disaster flicks? Rom-coms? Aliens, vampires, boy wizards and big-budget thrillers? Over! 2009, loves, is the summer of the high-fashion film - no other cinematic experience will cut the mustard. From Coco Avant Chanel (the dramatisation of Coco Chanel's life, pre-fashion, starring Audrey Tautou) to Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno; from haute couture doc Valentino: The Last Emperor to The September Issue - a fab behind-the-scener based on the day-to-day business of US Vogue - cinema is devoting itself to this most glorious, escapist, decadent and bonkers of sub-cultures.

In anticipation of a summer of fash flicks, Observer Woman will now address a selection of the myths associated with the industry. We're basing our insights on multiple viewings of Absolutely Fabulous - although a few of us have actually toiled at the coalface of real-life fash mags in our time, but we don't like to talk about it much. It makes us a bit... twitchy.

1. Do fashion people prefer babies or handbags?

Fashion people enjoy babies as an occasional alternative to handbags. They're both arm candy; and there are pros and cons for each. A handbag has a practical application (carrying shit around) but will ultimately go out of style (unless it's a Hermès Birkin - and who has the time for the two-year wait list?) A baby won't go out of style (probably), but people take a dim view if you try and return one because it's not as pretty as you first thought. (Unlike handbags, babies can look good at first, but evolve into ugly pre-schoolers overnight and with absolutely no warning.) Adopting one - as Sacha BC's Bruno does (see picture, above) - has obvious benefits. You can vet for pretty at the point of purchase; you can also assume that the good karma acquired in the adopting process will help to offset the bad karma you generated while peddling unattainable and unrealistic standards of beauty to the world at large. If it's black, well, tant mieux! You can do as Bruno did and give it "a traditional African name [like] OJ".

Babies come into their own - as far as fashion's concerned - if they grow up to be leggy, coltish beauties in the style of Carine "French Vogue" Roitfeld's daughter Julia Restoin-Roitfeld; and Anna "US Vogue" Wintour's daughter Bea Schaffer. At that point they provide their mothers with fabulous walkers, the kind of red-carpet accoutrement you know will be an asset to you; that'll look ravishing, be better behaved than any ghastly heterosexual-male option ever could, and remind everyone how pretty their mother was in her youth.

Fashion offspring also provide their steely power parent with a suggestion of softness. Anna Wintour, when asked to name her weakness, said (after minimal hesitation, and with molto sincerity - you know, for her): "My children."

2. Fashion people only speak in hyperbole

There is a lot of hyperbole in fashion (absolutely definitely more than there is in any other industry you can possibly dream of, ever), but hyperbole is the province of the low-ranking fashion person. The further up the ranks you climb, the more subdued your language becomes. At a certain point, you become too grand to enthuse. Ultimately you'll be too grand to even speak. From then on you communicate only through ironically arched eyebrows, displeased huffs and impatient snorts. No one's gonna be able to read much in your eyes, because they'll be cold, flinty and glazed, as if you're quite, quite bored - by everything and everybody.

3. Do fashion people have enormous clothing allowances?

According to CBS's Sixty Minutes on Anna Wintour (which ran last month in the US; extracts may be glimpsed online), the editor of US Vogue scores something like $200,000 a year in clothing stipend from Vogue's publishing company. Assuming this is true, it is also exceptional. Most of fashion doesn't get free money to spend on frocks, sadly. However, what fashion people do have is an insanely evolved capacity to blag. Freebies, discounts, access to top-secret sample sales, personal orders direct from designers who'll give them stuff at cost, the "lend" of a piece to wear to a glitzy do, gifts in exchange for an in-mag mention etc. Wheeling and dealing with discounts and long-term loans, the strategic "loss" of the odd sample, a thriving eBay profile... that, friends, is how fashion people (who are not, historically, paid more than your average child chimney sweep) look so good. Non-fashion people might mistake this sort of behaviour for dubious, in the style of the great politicians' expenses scandal, but that's because they are Non Fashion, so Don't Get It. Furthermore, they don't count.

4. Are all fashion people scathing, judgmental, power-crazed bitches?

Well - duh! Why else would one bother? Fashion's like the most horrible time anyone ever had at school, only with good hair and better shoes. If it didn't lock people out - make them feel excluded, fat and passé - then it wouldn't work. How else do you inspire people to keep buying new clothes when the ones they own are in perfectly good working order?

The aim for fashion people is to be the most scathing, judgmental, power-crazed bitch in the room. When everyone is scared of you, bravo! You've won.

To quote Bruno: "Naomi Campbell inspires me - despite all ze pressure of 25 years at ze top, she hasn't changed a bit und has remained a total bitch." Anna Wintour is also worth invoking at this juncture . She instils mega-fear in everyone by loading neutral statements with damning overtones, thus: "Stefano. I take it you're not really... [ominous pause, sardonic tilting of teeny tiny lady head] feeling colour this season?"

5. Do fashion people eat?

No - but they do drink coffee. How else to keep one's metabolism racing at breakneck speed, and one's brutal, snappy attitude at optimal fierceness? To wit: Anna Wintour is rarely seen without a Starbucks coffee cup within easy reach. The Miranda Priestly character in The Devil Wears Prada - who was not based on Wintour, incidentally; where ever did you hear that? - says, on discovering her assistant has not brought her latte: "Is there some reason my coffee isn't here? Has she... died or something?" Caffeine buzz is the fashion-approved high.

6. Fashion people are shallow and intellectually redundant. They're responsible for the dumbing and the slimming-down of popular culture. They're evil

... Sorry. Er, what? I got distracted by a ... skirt and ... OMG, look! A fatty in Balmain! How extraordinary. Aren't there laws against that? So. Have we met? I don't recall. And I kinda see where you were going with your look, but ... it doesn't ... Does it? No! Now, I must ... [OW drifts off to talk to someone more important].