Monday, 23 September 2013

London fashion weekend 2013



Today is Lauren's 18th birthday so as her present I got us both tickets for the Friday of London Fashion Weekend at Somerset House, unfortunately neither of us are lucky enough to get invites to the LFW shows (yet) so this made a good substitute! 

I booked the tickets online using a discount code from ELLE magazine so we managed to get access to the shopping and exhibitions, the trend catwalk show and a showbag each for under £30 each! 

Let's start with the showbag: this years was an exclusively designed tote bag by Sister by Sibling filled with goodies from all of the LFWend sponsors as you can see below! 



The discount code we got from ELLE also entitled us to a free maybelline gift box which we picked up when we visited the stand - we had a choice of four boxes containing four different 'looks' and a money off voucher for foundation! 


We also got handed one of the limited edition maybelline lipsticks, a bright fushia pink which Molly from the Saturdays has put her name to especially for LFWend (post coming soon).


The day itself was lovely, Somerset house is a beautiful setting and although some of the designers exhibiting were a little out of our price range it was exciting getting to browse through! A few pieces caught my eye including a cute tweed Celine skirt (completely out of my price range!) and a few pieces of jewellery.



One thing both of us did buy were the drinks and teas from BeautyIn. An exclusive product made and imported from Brazil, cold bottled drinks and flavoured teas as well as cereal bars and candy (we got some collagen gummy bears in our showbags 0% fat or sugar!). I'm not really a tea or coffee drinker but the green tea with collagen and grape flavouring tasted amazing and I can't resist a gimmick so if it makes my skin look great that's a bonus! it was £2.50 for ten sachets which can de drank cold or hot! 


There was also the 'bueno lounge' which was literally my idea of heaven; a room filled with cushions and bean bags and free massages and more importantly free kinder buenos! 

After all the shopping and filling our faces we headed to the first talk of the day 'designing for topshop' in which Emma Farrow was interviewed about her job role an the latest trends by the lovely Antonia O'Brian. We nabbed a front row seat and I was honestly in awe, it is fab to see someone so admirable and inspiring seem so grounded and genuine, I think its a common misconception that a lot of the top women in fashion are Miranda Priestly-a-likes! We also got a lot of insider information and the opportunity to ask questions (I will tell all the secrets in a later post!)


We finished of our day by watching the trend catwalk show, second row because Vodafone customers were able to reserve the front! Four key trends were talked through with a full catwalk of outfits for each. It was both of our first experiences of watching a catwalk show live and it was amazing! The clothes, the models, the photographers at the end of the runway, the music, the lights...everything you'd expect and more! 





I would absolutely recommend London Fashion Weekend to anyone who wants to get a glimpse into the world of London Fashion Week but doesn't quite have the credentials to get in yet! 

Ps. Excuse the shabby iphone photography, stupidly neither of us took our cameras!