Spend a fortune on a fabulous frock...then arrive at the party to find another woman wearing it too.
When asked about the blunder both Elle and Vogue editors sound remarkably sanguine about the situation.
Frequently, it's the press office that has the unenviable task of effectively being the PA to an inanimate object - organising its passage from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and brokering deals about which magazine gets temporary custody of it and when.
In fact, if you want to know which shows are most likely to be battlegrounds, then simply flick through the glossy mags and tot up who advertises. Because if a brand doesn't advertise, maintains Liz Jones, they simply won't end up on the magazine cover.
'The magazines are slaves to the labels,' she says. 'When I was at Marie Claire, we used to have a board with all the advertisers on - Armani, Versace, Gucci, Prada. Every time you featured an advertiser in the magazine, you racked up points. You knew you had to keep the advertisers happy.
'A cover scored you the maximum number of points. And a celebrity, provided it was a celebrity that the designer liked, scored you more points than a model. Every cover had to feature an advertiser.'
And not just any advertiser, either; only the really big spenders would score the sought-after cover slot. Money might not physically change hands, but it's widely known that advertisers have to cough up serious bucks to be in with a chance of being on the cover.
However, Lorraine Candy refutes the suggestions that her covers are driven by advertisers. She insists times have changed.
'It's just rubbish,' she says. 'We've used young British designers Giles Deacon and Richard Nicholl on the cover. Neither are advertisers - they just had great dresses.
'The reader is the most important thing, not the advertiser.'
