I am very excited to be going up to London for the day tomorrow. The reason for my visit? To attend the 'The Enduring Influence of British Style & Beauty' talk at Charlotte Tilbury's Make-Up House of Rock 'n' Kohl. Charlotte will be in conversation with three of the UK's most stylish ladies: Alice Temperley; Laura Bailey and Caroline Issa. I can't wait to hear what these stylish ladies have to say.
The Concept Store in Selfridges, which is open until Sunday is part of Charlotte's first ever beauty Festival. There are a host of events going on, including the talk which I am attending, and also a number of free activities:
#QuickFlick Eye Makeovers
Lipstick Slicks
Manicures & Nail Art
Make-up Bag Surgeries
Lipstick Readings
There will also be the opportunity to win a starring role in one of Charlotte's make-up videoes in the Beauty Flash photobooth.
I will be using my trip as an opportunity to finally use the Selfridges gift card which I won in a competition in December. Timing couldn't be better, as there are some fabulous items in the Selfridges sale.
As if this wasn't reason enough to be excited about my day trip, I have just heard that one of my favourite beauty bloggers, Caroline Hirons is appearing in-store earlier that afternoon, and I will also be meeting my Twitter friend, Sophie, for the first time in real life! She has just been selected as the Editor of the Elle UK 'Edited by the Interns' issue, so it is a really exciting time to meet up with her. Congratulations again Sophie! You can check out Sophie's fabulous winning entry here.
On Saturday, I attended the second day of the 2013 WOW (Women of the World) Festival at the Southbank Centre, with a group from Cardiff University, where I work. The #WOWWales group was made up of 30 competition winners, who had all submitted entries relating to their experiences of living in a digital world. It was really interesting to see the creative approaches that the competition entrants had taken to tackle this subject: poetry; graphic design; film scripts, and more. You can find out more about the #WOWWales experience here and here.
There were a lot of fascinating sessions running at WOW, but as a fashion blogger, one of the sessions which I was really interested in attending, was the 'Fashion, Beauty and Style' panel discussion. The panel was comprised of The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman, Natasha Pearlman, deputy editor of
Elle magazine and ethical fashion expert Amisha Ghadiali. Topics discussed included sustainable fashion; the contribution of fashion to the economy; the power of women within the fashion industry, and attitudes towards older women in the fashion industry. It was a fascinating discussion, with some great contributions from the audience.
Although my iphone and its rubbish battery life failed me yet again, thanks to the lovely Amy, who lent me her ipad, I was able to capture some of the event in a series of tweets. Here is my Storify of the event.
I don't need an excuse to pick up the latest copy of 'Elle' magazine, but if I did, then I think a free Dune £20 gift card might just be the perfect incentive! The December issue (with Cameron Diaz on the cover) comes with a gift card which gives you £20 off any pair of full-price boots when you shop instore. All you will need to do is to register your gift card on the Elle website to activate it before use. As I subscribe to the magazine anyway, this was a great added bonus for me when I opened up the latest issue when it landed on my doormat.
There's nothing like the latest issue of one of your favourite magazines landing on the doormat to herald the start of a new month, and indeed the start of a new year! I've said it before, but I really love the subscriber covers that Elle do. As they don't have all the text and coverlines that you get on the standard copy of the magazine, you can really focus on the great photography.
This month's cover star is 17 year old Dakota Fanning, featuring on her first UK glossy magazine cover. I am seriously coveting her makeup look. I love the matte red lip (Lancome L'Absolu Rouge in Rouge Odysee - £19.50) and the red nail polish (Rimmel Lycra Pro in Hot Gossip - a very purse-friendly £3.99). I have one matte red in my collection (Revlon Strawberry Suede) so I think I will give that another wearing after seeing Dakota's lip look.
This month's magazine also comes with a 'Front Row: The Runway Edit' supplement, which highlights the key trends for S/S 2012 and the key designers from each Fashion Week. I love these supplements as they give a really good flavour of the style highlights to come over the next few months. It's the perfect read to get 2012 off to a stylish start.
I love the 'Techno Print' trend that is featured, as it includes one of my favourite designers, Mary Katrantzou. I recently had to choose a non-work related topic to give a presentation on, and I chose Mary's work as my focus. I opted not to have any text in my presentation so as not to distract from the beautiful clothing, which meant that I was wholly reliant on knowing my topic inside out. I'm happy to report that it went really well. Given that nobody else in the group was interested in fashion, they hadn't heard of her. But by the end of my 25 minutes, they all said they had found it really interesting and enjoyable and loved hearing about her work. A few more converts to the Katrantzou cause!
Last week I was invited along to the 25th Anniversary celebrations of Central Pharmacy in Cardiff. The store, which is at the heart of one of Cardiff's most popular shopping areas, is a beauty blogger's paradise, stocking a wide range of brands, from Clarins to Daniel Sandler; Dior to Nuxe. In addition to all the beauty loveliness stocked instore, Central Pharmacy is also home to a Clarins salon, which is one of only 76 salons in the U.K to have been awarded Clarins Gold Salon Status, so you can be assured that you are receiving the highest standard of Clarins service.
At the event we were given the opportunity to be given makeovers, using the latest Clarins makeup collections and were also given a demonstration of the Clarins Professional TriActive Facial and Body Treatments, which have been developed over five years.
There are six different types of Tri-Active facial, which are designed to address specific skin concerns:
The Youth Activator
The Lifting Line Smoother
The Radiance Reviver
The Moisture Replenisher
The Skin Healer
The Detox and Shine Stopper
The treatments have had some great reviews, e.g. 'Elle' UK's Georgia Collins has described the treatment as "one hour and twenty minutes of utter bliss", so it was good to be able to see the results up close. The treatments looked very relaxing, and the ladies who were having the treatments looked great after they'd finished, and were really pleased with the results. After the demonstrations, a large number of ladies rushed to book themselves in for the treatments after being impressed with the results.
The beauty therapist was really helpful, and was more than happy to give guests advice on which products would work best for their skin concerns, and also the best way to apply the products in order to maximise their effectiveness.
At the event it was great to be able to meet my fellow beauty blogger, Ms Red, of Ms Red's Beauty Blog, who I'd previously only known from Twitter. I also got to meet the lovely Sam from Clarins HQ who was wearing some fabulous Alexander Wang-esque boots from TopShop, which I was disappointed to find out were from a previous season, so will never be mine!
Ms Red
Central Pharmacy is owned by the same family who run Escentual, and it was lovely to be able to chat to @EscentualRakesh about the store and its plans in the forthcoming months.
Just before I left, I took advantage of the 25% discount being offered for the Anniversary celebrations, and purchased Daniel Sandler's limited edition 'In Love' candle, which is burning as I type. That was my consolation for not being able to attend Daniel's instore appearance later that week.
I might not have won one of the prizes (£75, £100, and £150 Clarins prize hampers) in the fantastic raffle that everyone had been entered into, but I was more than happy with my goodie bag which contained a powder compact, a mini Beauty Flash Balm (one of my Holy Grail products), and a mini HydraQuench Intensive Serum Bi-Phase.
One of my favourite recent purchases has been my new TopShop trench coat. I first saw it before I went on holiday, but didn't buy it as I thought I should save my money for my holidays. However on my return, I realised the error of my ways, as it was nowhere to be found instore and was out of stock online. Moral of the story being: If you love it, buy it there and then. I like how it mixes classic trench coat details with the leather-look detailing which is very current.
The Object of My Desire
After a protracted saga of standard email responses, unhelpful shop assistants and unanswered tweets from TopShop I eventually managed to track the coat down instore. Thanks to the lovely Alice Wignall from Elle magazine I knew to get a smaller size as she told me the sizing comes up large on this item.
Thank goodness for Twitter, as TopShop were useless at dealing with my queries. I don't see the point of a brand being on Twitter if they aren't going to communicate with their followers as part of a two-way dialogue, as opposed to just tweeting about items from their collections. They could definitely learn a thing or two from Asos and My Wardrobe who have always been really helpful on Twitter, e.g. answering queries re. orders, or just engaging in conversation, e.g. discussing one of my style-crushes, Taylor Tomasi Hill.
I would love to hear about any 'must-have' pieces that you have had to track down. Or any examples of great experiences of interacting with brands on Twitter.
One of the shoes of the season which has featured in all of the style magazines is the Miu Miu glitter trompe d'oeil boot which gives the effect of wearing strappy shoes with some rather sparkly socks. Another variation on it was the gold and pink fan boots which didn't seem to be as widely featured. I don't know what it is about them but they just make me smile. And I know I'm not the only one, as lots of my favourite ladies on Twitter were raving about them, including A Girl, A Style and JenniferElleUK. However these are firmly out of my price range at £555, so I made do with lots of admiring glances at various blog posts and style magazines.
But try as I might I just couldn't shake the urge to get my glitter on. Which is where the Office sale stepped in. Lurking at the back of the shelf was one pair of black glitter pointed ballet pumps which kept calling me back. Now I'm not a big wearer of ballet pumps, and it's usually a case of 'the higher the heel the better' for me when it comes to shoes, but I felt like trying something different, so I picked these up.
These were originally £60, but had been reduced to £16. And thanks to Office's extra 20% off sale shoes, these only cost £12.80! I have had lots of comments on them and they do indeed make me smile when I put them on. They might not be as glamorous as the Miu Miu ones, but they have satisfied my need for a glitter fix......for now!
One of my favourite things about the end of the month (apart from payday that is!) is the arrival of 'Elle' magazine on my doormat. I know that inside I will always find lots of inspiration (not to mention temptation!), not only in terms of fashion, but also in relation to culture, travel and life in general. As I end up buying every issue anyway, last year I signed up for a subscription, as you save on the newstand rate. 'Elle' offer some great subscription offers and always have great free subscriber gifts so it seemed foolish not to ( in my world at least!). One of the things I love about subscribing to 'Elle' is that they do separate covers for subscriber issues. These are always beautifully designed and are devoid of all the coverlines on the standard versions which can interfere with the visual image on the cover.
Kirsten Dunst on the cover of the September issue of Elle (UK edition)
The September issue of any fashion magazine is always hotly anticipated, heralding as it does the start of the new fashion season. Whilst we may be still trying to make our Summer wardrobes work with the 'joys' of the British Summer, the September issue calls us to look at all of the Autumn/Winter looks that are waiting to be tried out. But that's another post!
This month's little package of fashion delights also packed an extra beauty punch, as it is accompanied by a free nail polish. Having forgotten that there was going to be a free gift with this issue, it was an unexpected bonus for me. The colour in question? 'The Elle Red' by Mavala (5ml). I have never used Mavala polishes and love wearing red nails so couldn't wait to try this out. And I was very glad that I did.
The polish applied really easily and smoothly. I could probably have got away with just one coat, but applied two just to be certain of total coverage. Once the polish has dried, it has a really glossy finish. I am very impressed with this polish and will definitely be trying more colours in the Mavala range, especially as they retail for only £2.99. In fact I think I might just purchase some more copies of the magazine (£3.80), as there are two other shades to try ('The Elle Grey' and 'The Elle Orange' - described as 'an edgy grey' and 'a playful orange').
