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So, I'm back from London Fashion Week with a bump now. Doing the monthly shop in Asda yesterday certainly confirmed this! I had such an amazing time during my 4 days at London Fashion Week and have got SO many photos and videos to share. I'm going to divide everything up into day by day posts, then street style bits and bobs and eventually a video diary or two once I've edited the 150-odd videos down!
SO, where to begin!! The train? You got it! Well, I queued for approximately 2 million years at the station and got my expensive high speed ticket to London (it takes 50 minutes instead of 90 minutes!) I had to get a Mocha to wake myself up after a hideous night's sleep.
I decided to bust out my new charity shop bag which has loads of different compartments. These compartments turned out to be the BANE OF MY LIFE as the day wore on as I kept having panic attacks that I'd lost my camera/phone/debit card! Cute bag, though.
Jen was running fashionably late, but she eventually rocked up at the Premier Inn in Stratford's Westfield centre where we checked in to our room. Our pals at Premier Inn kindly sponsored our 3-night stay, and with a location like that it was a job to drag ourselves to fashion week every day! Every shop and restaurant you could ever need, under one roof... I was giddy with excitement, but we were in London for other reasons, so I had to be strong and tear myself away from to shops, if only for a while...
So our first stop was the heaving Headonism exhibition, showcasing the capital's up and coming millinery marvels (or 'hat makers', which sounds much less exciting). I stopped for a quick chat with Susie Bubble, exchanged pleasantries with one of the milliners who was a tutor of mine at uni (with whom I shared a somewhat fiery relationship!) and made a quick exit as it was very busy in there!
Wig headpieces by Charlie Le Mindu!
I bumped into Motel, who took an outfit snap of me! The CSS on my blog is stretching it a bit, so see it featured on their blog here. I was wearing the lovely Mary playsuit they sent me. It was a gorgeous reddy-burgundy shade, but I did suffer from a bit of crotch creasing as the day went on - never a good look! They also filmed a video of me explaining my outfit!
Shirt and boots - charity shop, Jacket - topshop, necklace - New Look)
This close up is from Lily's Instagram!
I bumped into Brix Smith-Start, who let me take this fab picture of her and Gladys the pug! Glady's fashion week wardrobe was being sponsored by Mulberry - alright for some!
Awwwww!
Topshop pitched a little van onsite, selling t-shirts which celebrate their 10th Anniversary of sponsoring the British Fashion Council's 'New Gen' scheme to support new design talent. Twenty of the past designers they've supported have created limited edition t-shirts for Topshop, which you can buy online. The New Gen t-shirt exhibition will be featured in my Day 2 post!
Now, I deliberately didn't apply for show tickets this season. I don't feel entitled to be invited as I know that my blog isn't high fashion! If there was a charity shop fashion week, you know I'd be elbowing my way right to the FROW (front row!), but as for LFW, I do know my place. I'd rather reject myself from the word go than have a PR condescendingly do it for me!
Having said that, I'm more than happy to try my luck at getting into shows without an invite (or as I like to call it 'with a metaphorical ticket'). As you may remember from my last LFW experiences, if you wait patiently to one side, once all of the invited guests are let into a show, if there is any remaining space in the venue, they let the riff raff in as well! It's so much more fun to do it this way, as you get into shows you'd never get invited to in the first place (well, I speak for myself here), and you're doing the designers a favour by giving them a nice full venue too! This is what I've only come to learn in the past 6 months - anyone can get into fashion shows! Yes, sometimes you get let down (2 shows prior to this one reached capacity and we got turned away), but more often than not, you get let in! Some people might frown on it, but at the end of the day, bums on seats are better than empty spaces, both in terms of potential show coverage and also for the designer's reputation! Nobody wants to show to a half empty venue. Cringe!
So, here's some snaps from our spot in the 2nd row at Zoe Jordan's show!
I bumped into the lovely Seb from Planet Notion later that day and offered to write up the show for the website, which should go live soon! This wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't have gotten into this show, so I was chuffed to have an extra writing gig! (EDIT: My show review is now live on Planet Notion!)
I saw Jameela Jamil talking to someone after the show so started frantically papping her - apparently it was Holly 'Mwah' Valance and I hadn't noticed! Easy mistake, I guess . Anyway, Jameela looked amazing and also hung around laughing and chatting with 'fans' after interviewing Holly. She always seems like the nicest person, and my dickhead-radar is second to none, so this is quite an accolade from me!
Another show we queued for with our 'metaphorical tickets' was Felder Felder! I adored this show, as I did last season (see my LFW Day 1 video for a review!), and am aiming to give it its own little post in the future because my own pictures of it were an atrocity. Key themes were volcanic and galaxy style prints, jewelled tassels on midi dresses and those lovely A-line, racerback minidresses the sisters specialise in. I was glad to see the metallic leather is staying around! This is where I ended up stood next to Seb by chance and offered to write up the Zoe Jordan show!
No decent show pics (the lighting in this venue during shows throws my camera into a self-destruct mode), but here's a bit of the front row! Brix Smith-Start, Grace Woodward (in hat), Alexandra Burke, Zara Martin, Portia Freeman and more!
Jen and I bumped into Kristabel in the press lounge. She's one of my favourite bloggy people. She has a fun and infectious personality and, like me, isn't afraid to be a bit silly! Unlike me, though, her photography is incredible, so head to her blog ASAP and check out her LFW postings!
We were let into the beautiful Orla Kiely presentation, which was set up like a mini ballroom, complete with a fabulous jazz band and giant gold glitter ball! Quaint and amazing. The designs were typically Orla Kiely - gorgeous retro frocks and blouses with collars and ditsy prints aplenty. The cat print was - naturally - a favourite!
Bumped into JamJam again, got a full length snap so we could all fully appreciate the fab frilly ankle sock and platform boot combo.
We were told off for taking photos at the Tatty Devine launch of their new Silver collection - but I did manage to take a stealthy shot of this amazing little cat ring!
By evening, we were all very hungry and on the recommendation of Susie Bubble (who we chatted with for a while in the lounge), we headed to Byron, an amazing burger joint. There were six of us in total (Lily, Jen, Kristabel, Lucy, Carrie et moi). You'll see a bit more of this on my LFW video when it's ready! I definitely recommend this restaurant - £13 for an amazing burger (lovely and rare, like I like it!), fries and a drink. Not bad! The only downer was when I lost my debit card and was scrabbling about the floor like a loon to see if I dropped it. I hadn't. Dinner was on Jen this night!
So that was Day 1 in an oversized nutshell! There'll be plenty more snippets of it in my video once its edited! Stay tuned for Day 2's goings on... Did I find my debit card? Did I get into any more shows? Did I finally learn how to take a clear photo? I can sense that the anticipation is through the roof right now!
Off to have a thoroughly un-LFW day at work now. I've taken so long on this post, they'll be lucky if I have time to brush my teeth, let alone get out of my pyjamas! Oh, the glamour!
xxx
