Susannah Frankel: 'The Air is so light that I can fit it in my handbag and even stand up straight'

Can a laptop ever be fashionable? With that in mind, I tell the man responsible for my technical support that I want to buy an 11-inch MacBook Air and he goes into uncharacteristically chauvinistic over-drive. "I suppose you like it because it's small – because it's the size and weight of a magazine, of a powder compact? It's not make-up, you know. It's too expensive."

They're not cheap, certainly. You're paying, though, for the size: it's so light that carrying it around – in my case, between shows – is a revelation. And lo! I can fit it into my handbag and even stand up straight when I walk. It's priceless, then, if you ask me. Many small things are expensive: diamonds, La Perla underwear, micro-pigs... That is their allure. For aesthetic and pragmatic reasons.

Of course, the iPad is even tinier and much cheaper than the MacBook Air. What's more, it's fashionable, as many a designer name behind an iPad wallet would no doubt agree. (I give you... the Celine-clothed iPad.) But even with a wireless keyboard it's not easy to touch-type on an iPad and as there's so far no Word app designed for it, editing fully-formatted documents is not possible.

And so, I love my new laptop. I can use it on my knee, live from the runway. I can work in bed with it and am not disturbed by any whirring of fans and so forth. The screen is as sharp as anyone could wish for. Internet shopping – and indeed watching TV on it – is a joy. No problems here where poring over truffle shavings on MasterChef.

Finally, of course, the Air is indeed pretty. Just like a magazine or a powder compact, in fact. And these things are important too, you know.

Susannah Frankel is Fashion Editor of 'The Independent'

s.frankel@independent.co.uk