The guestlists will be drawn up from an as-yet unrevealed roster of their respective cities’ hippest citizens. In just under a fortnight’s time this priviliged and doubtless really quite skinny group will step beyond the velvet ropes outside these cities’ most fashionable venues, and bear witness to a little moment of fashion history.

From New York (where they’ll be at the Skylight studios) to Paris (Colette) via Dubai (The Address), Tokyo (La Fabrique) and Los Angeles (where the venue hasn’t been finalised, but the shindig will be hosted by Tina Brown) the parties will all be focused on the same thing: watching the first fashion show to be streamed live in 3-D.

Burberry’s Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey is the man responsible for importing the recently-revived vogue for all things three-dimensional into his show at London Fashion Week. Announcing the broadcast this week he said: “3-D technology will bring our global audience into the London show space, allowing them to see the colours and fabrics, to hear the music and to be a part of that moment when it all finally comes together.”

Which is all very well. After all Burberry, Versace, Alexander McQueen, Armani and various other big fashion houses have all been engaged for some time in a process of opening up their shows to live broadcast. And the idea that 3-D will help Burberry aficionados who don’t have a seat allocation by the Chelsea College of Art’s catwalk to soak up every heady detail of, say, Bailey’s trench coat references, or to truly appreciate Emma Watson’s gamine talent for wearing sequins, makes almost perfect sense. Until, that is, you consider the glasses.

For years now fashion people have been mocked for wearing dark glasses indoors. Yet they have never let the hoi polloi’s crass jibes force them to forsake their shades. At the Vivienne Westwood menswear show in Milan last month I was awestruck at how many of the audience were toting sunnies, even though the show began in almost complete darkness. And it is not impossible that two of contemporary fashion’s greatest power figures — Karl Lagerfeld and Anna Wintour — are surgically attached to their favourite pairs, so rarely are they seen without them.

Now 3-D technology is poised to give everyone a good reason to wear dark glasses in the dark, just like Karl and Anna — but without the élan. Already the burgeoning 3-D revolution has helped James Cameron to break his own Titanic box-office record with Avatar. LG, the technology company, has confidently predicted that 30 million people will buy 3-D TV sets by 2012. Suddenly there is a huge new market, not just for 3-D TV and cinema performances, but for the eyewear that makes appreciating it possible. So far, though, the technocrats have been in charge — and the shades, sadly, have reflected that.

Least bad have been the disposable polarised numbers handed out at the cinemas to Avatar and other 3-D filmgoers. Produced for a company called Real D, whose technology is the most popular system for incinema 3-D viewing, these are the plastic black frames that look a little NHS freebie, a little Blues Brothers, and a little Groucho Marx. They may fall off easily, but they do at least have a certain geek appeal.

At home, though, the options are much less appealing than Groucho sans moustache. So far all the the major TV manufacturers have come up with terrible variations of the wraparound, a horrible amalgalm of Bollé, Tron and The Matrix. The pictures from the most recent CES show in Las Vegas laid bare the full extent of this horror; a procession of perspiring technophiles in sweatpants and wraparounds indulging in Reservoir Dogs fantasies.

In not too long, however, it appears that fashion will begin to catch up with the technology. At a recent 3-D entertainment summit David Hill, chairman of Fox Sports, put his finger on the current 3-D specs’ design flaws when he observed: “I have two teenage girls, and they don’t want to go on dates looking like they’re going to do some spot welding.” This prompted the admission from Real D that a collaboration with Gucci is already in the pipeline.

Here in Britain, the serendipitously named Brian Lenz is Sky’s man in charge of 3-D. “There are a whole range of alternate styles that we’ve got samples of,” he says. “Something can always be made to look that little bit of cooler, and that is already starting to happen.”

Lenz is focused on trifling, non-fashion matters of technology, but says that recent advances in 3-D curved lens production by a US optician called David Johnston should allow for more varied frame-design in future. Tantalisingly, he reveals that Oakley and Ray-Ban have been approached to help come up with some of these designs. He says: “Now the lens production is possible so you’re going to see a lot more activity this year — there is going to be an explosion of interest.”

These advances may well come too late for Burberry’s guests. Yesterday the company remained coy about precisely which style of glasses its guests will be forced to endure in order to absorb Bailey’s designs via 3D — a worrying sign that it’ll be wraparounds all round.

Yet should 3-D technology take hold as firmly as Lenz and his ilk believe it will, we will all be wearing sunglasses indoors within the next few years — and eventually they should look pretty good.

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