So Saturday was a pretty amazing day in the life of Cassiefairy. First of all, I got to spend a day with my husband in the capital; secondly, I had the chance to meet my bestie for a coffee for the last time before she gets married; and last but definitely not least, I was lucky enough to be invited to attend London Fashion Weekend! I was pretty chuffed when, after 2 and a half hours travelling, I finally arrived at Somerset House and took the snap below to prove it!
You may have seen all my tweets and instagram photos during the day, but I took hundreds of photographs during the day and even though I’d like to share them all with you, what you’d end up with is a flip-book of my whole day which might bore you a tad – especially blurry shots of my lunch etc! So here are some of the better images, and I’m still sharing a relatively photo-heavy post so that you can get a feel for the day and what I got up to. So first, here are some snaps of me arriving at Somerset House, posing for a photo beneath the London Fashion Weekend sign, the view of the Thames from the balcony of the venue and a flattering snap of me waiting to get my hair blow-dried in the Toni & Guy pop-up salon.
After my pampering session (where I ended up with a blow dry that looked pretty similar to how my hair looked throughout the whole of the 90s in a back-combed, Rachel-from-Friends, layered style) I headed to the shops around the venue to look at all the goodies. I wasn’t planning to buy anything and thanks to the wince-inducing price-tags I didn’t – my purse stayed firmly in my satchel! However, the ex-branding-student in me was very excited to check out how all the products were displayed and the marketing campaigns that each brand was using for SS14. I especially enjoyed the stately-garden-esque Radley display with handbags in flowerpots and topiary dogs. Also have a look at these wooden glasses – now that is my next spexy look!
One of the things that I absolutely did not want to miss was the industry talks in the lounge and I managed to attend two of them during the day – ‘Women in Making’, which was all about the Triumph competition for female designers and their mentoring programme with superstar mentors such as Gizzi Ersine and Paloma Faith, and the talk that interested me the most was ‘In Praise of Blogging’ with the lovely girls from Remotely Fashion.
I really enjoyed listening to their take on fashion blogging and the discussion on how the world of blogging is changing. Miriam and Siobhan were very engaging and helpfully answered questions from the audience with big smiles on their faces! I learnt a lot from them too, as the whole ‘outfit-of-the-day’ world of fashion blogging is almost alien to me, and I realised that my blog definitely falls into the lifestyle category – I don’t think I could put myself out there like they do, and I was really rather scared by their discussion on the ‘haters’, but they are so right: where do the haters find the time to bother posting negative comments?! I couldn’t handle that and would much rather be hidden behind the computer screen than on it!
I think the girls did a great job of presenting to a packed audience, even when their microphones and slideshow stopped working, and I was inspired to get back to work on my blog straight away! Unfortunately I missed the ‘In Conversation’ talk with Hilary Alexander OBE so I was thrilled when she introduced the Julien Macdonald catwalk show later in the evening – at least I got to see her!
I wandered round the Isabella Blow exhibition in the afternoon and was amazing by all the glitz and glamour – I would SO wear all of those outfits if I could get away with it! The whole staging of the exhibition as exquisite and I loved all the sequins and sparkly lights – below is the spangly artwork that greets you on the way into the exhibition. Unfortunately photographs were not permitted inside the show, so you’ll just have to check it out for yourself if you’re in London anytime soon. As the afternoon turned to evening Somerset House lit up and looked even more grand and magical than ever. There was a buzz of excitement in the air as we all waited for the main event to begin – the Julien Macdonald catwalk show.
Here’s a snap of me with the hottest ticket at London Fashion Weekend and you can imagine my excitement as I took my seat to watch the super-glamourous Julien Macdonald catwalk show. I’ve never seen such stunning dresses in my life and it made me wish that I was someone important with some important event to attend so that I could wear such a pretty dress! I would even get married in these dresses – despite there not being all that much fabric in some of them! I think I’d suit the new season metallic and loads of sequins and lace, even though I might not be able to fit one leg into that famous Jessie J catsuit!
All in all I had lovely day out and learnt a lot about the trends that we’ll all be wearing for Spring/Summer 2014, and I’ll report back on these over the coming couple of weeks – including ways to get the look for less, of course! I need to say a big thank you to Talented Talkers for inviting me to the event and also massive thanks to George at Asda for a purse-friendly outfit which I felt comfortable (but not frumpy!) wearing and felt like I fitted in with all the super-fashionable ladies at the event 🙂 I would love to go to this kind of event again and can’t wait for the next one 😀
Some items in this blog post have been gifted to me and the pink links indicate a gifted product, affiliate link or information source. All thoughts and opinions in this post are based on my own experience and I am not responsible for your experience 🙂
