hoever says that modelling is glamorous is totally fibbing.

There’s blood everywhere. Shining at the bottom of boxes. Dripping off tables into buckets. Casually staining mounds of crushed ice, the way strawberry sauce stains a Slush Puppy. And – in the middle of all the redness – are fish. Big fish, little fish. Oysters, lobsters, squid, prawns, scallops, eels. Thousands and thousands of sea-life, piled on top of each other or laid out in rows. Whole, headless, finless or chopped into tiny pieces. Some that have already shuffled off this mortal coil, and some that are clearly in the process of desperately trying not to.

It’s 4.40am and I’m standing in the middle of a Quentin Tarantino version of Finding Nemo.

“Problem?” Yuka says sharply.

I swallow. “Nope.”

“Then find something prettier to do with your face.” Yuka turns on her sharp black heels and starts clicking violently across the enormous concrete warehouse. I follow meekly behind her: smiling as hard as I can at everyone. They ignore me completely. I guess fishermen in Japan have even less interest in fashion than I do.

A corner of the warehouse has been set aside for the shoot, in the most temporary way possible. A ‘changing room’ has been propped against a wall with a mirror leaning next to it, and a fold-up table covered in make-up/hair accessories is standing right next to a bucket of eels. Fashion people are running around: talking loudly and plugging in hairdryers and curling tongs. It’s a whirlwind of activity and noise, yet as we approach it goes strangely silent.

I’m 6,000 miles away from school, but it feels like I’ve just entered the classroom with the headmistress standing behind me.

“Not there,” Yuka snaps at a woman who just put a chair by the wall. “Move them,” she says, pointing to a pair of shoes on the floor. “Stop that,” she says to a man brushing a coat with a clothes brush and wiping terrified sweat from his forehead.

Any second now she’s going to demand that everyone sits up straight before she asks for their homework.

Then Yuka reaches behind a curtain and retrieves a blue plastic suit bag. Slowly, she slides it open and pulls out the contents. It’s short and pale orange and frothy, made of layers and layers of delicate, transparent material: tight, rigid and wired at the top and puff-balling out at the waist into a stiff bell shape. There are tiny embroidered red circles scattered through each layer – stitched in an immaculate, intricate spiral – and at the hem and around the neck are thin tendrils of orange material, floating upwards and outwards.

It’s a dress. Or perhaps I should say: it’s related to a dress the way a fat ginger cat is related to a tiger, or a mural on the wall of McDonald’s is related to the Sistine Chapel.

“Oh my goodness,” I whisper, reaching out to touch it. “It’s so beautiful.”

Yuka immediately knocks my hand away. “Of course it is,” she says stiffly. “I don’t make things that aren’t.” She raises an eyebrow. “This is haute couture. Do you know what that means?”

I quickly scan my brain for anything I can remember from French GCSE. Couture = scar. Haute = tall.

“A huge trauma?” I guess tentatively.

“No.” Yuka’s lips are getting thinner by the second. “It means high fashion. It means there is only one. I made it, by hand, specifically for you. It is more valuable than the car we just came in. These, therefore, are your dressers.” Yuka gestures to a couple of young Japanese women wearing black, who’ve just appeared on either side of me like twins in a creepy old horror movie.

I blink then start feeling a little bit indignant. Dressers? Exactly how much of a child does Yuka think I am? “I’m very nearly sixteen years old,” I tell her in my most aggrieved-yet-still-respectful voice. “I think I can dress myself.”

Yuka lifts her eyebrows. “This time I do not want you accessorised with stickers. Gold or otherwise.”

And I think she’s made her point.