London Fashion week and London Vodafone Fashion Weekend

Hi,

As most of you will probably know, not so long ago it was London Fashion week (It is Paris fashion week now and before that it was Milan fashion week  and before London FW was New York FW and Milan Fashion week!!!). It is a pretty exciting time as it means lots of designers showcase thier new, exciting designs and ideas (for SS15 this time) and if you love sewing clothes and interesting pattern cutting like I do the fashion weeks= fun and excitement!  :)

My mum and I were lucky enough to be in London on one of the days of LFW and we saw some pretty cool stuff. First, all the banners in Oxford Street (one of the bustling hubs during LFW as all the designer shops are there):

 

In the middle of Oxford Street a photo shoot with a model was happening!  I don't know who for but it was cool and I managed to get a snap:

I also saw the beautiful shop windows of Burberry,  containing thier AW14 hand painted coats, shoes and bags which I had seen in all my vogue,  marie claire and Elle magazines- They look just as beautiful in real life- which is impressive!:

Burberrys was by far my fave shop display in the whole of Oxford Street. I only window shopped down Oxford Street as everything is too expensive!  

For a while now Vodafone have hosted LFWeekend

the weekend after LFW. This September (there are two a year) was the first time I have ever been as it is only in the last year that I have studied the fashion calendar to work out when all the exciting stuff happens!

VLFW takes place at Somerset House (another hub during LFW as some catwalk shows do take place there). My mum booked for us too see both the catwalk shows on the day we went- designer and trend... On the front row!!!!! (Or F'row as it is known in the biz. Lol! )

It was so cool - like being a celebrity and it was the first time I have ever seen a fashion clothing catwalk before.

Here was my view from the first show:

The first show was a trend show(what you should be wearing now :p AW14). I won't waffle on, I will let the clothes speak for themselves. But I will say that the catwalk was arranged by outnet.com so if you see anything you really like you can go to thier site and pick it up :p:

The last look was an Oscar De Larenta  dress, very pretty I thought:

The next catwalk we saw was a Nicholas Oakwell Couture show. I will definitely be letting these clothes speak for themselves as they were amazing!  Couture means 'high sewing' and relates to pieces which can take hundreds if not thousands of hours to make due to highly technical construction and or lots of intricate hand sewn embellishments. I felt very lucky to see such things in the flesh moving past me- not behind museum glass as they usually are:

Amazingly technical beading went into this dress!:

And the designer himself came out at the end! :D He was very interesting to listen to and he told us about how detailed his design process was down to him even imagining the perfume the lady he is designing for would wear!:

Here is the entry to the catwalk:

Hehe,  and here are the queues outside of it:

Another cool thing I got to do at LVFW was get a models headshot done :) and try a 4D virtual reality experience to see what it was like to be a runway catwalk model! I put these big goggles on then when I turned my head I could see photographers etc.. to the sides of me etc.. and you walk on the spot whilst you see the runway and everyone to the sides of it- it was very fun and super realistic but kinda hard to explain :p

The tote bag for this year was designed by Lulu Guinness. It came full of little goodies which I have been using and enjoying:

I think that is about it for my account on VLFW :)

But... I still have one last thing.... You have made it through my post so I thought you deserved a treat.....

*****A GIVEAWAY*****

To let a special winner get a slice of the action of VLFW I am giving away a selection of goodies from the day!!!!!!:

- An essie 'Naughty nautical' nail polish

- Maybeline 'Great Lash' mascara

-A catwalk guide from the day with pretty pictures and more explanations on the trends

- And 2 pretty picture cards/business cards too :)

The giveaway is open to anyone anywhere. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment below- let me know your fave fashion magazine for fun If you want and if course some way to contact you if you win!

To get two extra entries post a link to this giveaway or my shop via your twitter or Facebook or a blog, anything really! Also if you buy anything in my shop you will also automatically be given 2 extra entries :)

The giveaway will close on Friday the tenth of October and the winner will be announced on the same day.

Well done for making it all the way through this super long post, I hope you enjoyed the flurry of fashion and good luck to all those who enter the giveaway :)

See you all soon,

Bye xxx

Symposium! (and stuff :)

Hi,

 

Last week was a really good week for me as it was 'Symposium week' at my college. What this means is basically a week off of timetabled lectures with loads of fun and interesting workshops, talks and performances going on instead :D

 

I booked myself onto loads of the workshops including zumba (which was really enjoyable), dream catcher making, sword fighting (super fun!!!!!) and I did quite a few costume related ones, including 3 morning workshops about Kimonos :0)

The lady was really nice and knowledgeable and bought in tons of the kimonos from her collection from martial arts related ones to bridal.

 

Here are a couple of her most extravagant kimono over-robes:

 

 

And here is me (from behind so you can see my freestyle- tied

 obi which hangs down) dressed as a Geisha :) It was cool being dressed up- I learnt a lot about how it actually feels to wear the kimono as well as how to put it on properly:

 

The obi is done up so much more tightly than I imagined it was and there is a lot more padding than I thought there was underneath too :P Brian who is next to me was dressed up like a shogun (military warrior). The lady who ran the workshops also rents out her kimonos etc... and has a website- where there are more pictures of all the kimonos we all tried on at symposium: here!

 

Another workshop I did was trauma makeup. Hahaha, a lot of fake blood was used! and some cornflakes mixed with coffee, golden syrup and red food colouring to make stuff that resembled blood clots.

 

I warn all those who are faint hearted to LOOK AWAY NOW!

 

As the following picture of my work I did in the workshop although FAKE (of course! :) is very gory:

 

 

I think I actually did get it quite realistic looking thanks to the techniques of the tutor :-)

 

Another thing that made my week really good apart from symposium was finding out that I was the special winner of a free Royal School of Needlework day course from the draw I entered at the creative stitches and Hobbycrafts show at the excel :D I am soo excited and have chosen to do a course on 17th century design inspired metal/gold work button brooches- It sounds so interesting- that is in November so kind of like a great early Christmas present!

 

And if all that wasn't enough for one week me and my mum went to the John Paul Gaultier fashion exhibition at the Barbican Arts centre/Theatre in London which was fabulous.

 

It was really different to other exhibitions I have been to as they gave some of the mannequins faces using digital projection- they even talked! I thought this really brought the whole exhibition and the clothes to life a bit more.

 

Look at the amazingness of these dresses!:

 

 

Another thing that was cool and different was that they actually had a moving catwalk! All these mannequins were dressed and on stands that moved around the catwalk, again this brought so much more life and excitement to the clothes making them look even more spectacular than they already are:

 

Well, that's just about it for the catch up of my week...

 

.....No.... Wait! I have one more fabulous thing to tell you about :P The Chocolate festival I went to on Sunday with a friend from college at the London Business and Design centre  (I really did have a crazy fun week :oD)

 

There were quite a few different samples of yummy chocolate to try and lots of baked goods on sale. As a treat I went for this brownie:

 

 

It was sooooo delicious, it was called a 'buckeye' brownie. It was a normal chocolate brownie topped with Oreo cookie frosting and a layer of milk chocolate ganache mmmm... I want another one!

 

My brownie was from Batch bakery: http://batchbakery.co.uk/

 

My friend had a peanut butter brownie which she said was amazing from the Brownie Bar: http://www.browniebar.co.uk/

 

They do a really good price online delivery of brownies so I think I may have to get some of those sent to me in the near future as they looked good too but I couldn't fit a second brownies in after my Oreo- sugar overload one :P

 

I hope you are all well, and now I promise my post is officially finished :)

 

Don't forget to enter my Spring/Easter giveaway if you haven't already as as I found out last week you never know your luck!

 

Speak to you all again very soon,

 

Bye XxXxXxX