White

Last night was a friend's birthday and the theme for the party was white. Although not everyone stuck to the theme and I added red to my outfit, as it was a new addition to my wardrobe - it was still fun. Wearing my new white jeans, a white kimono style tee and red jacket, it felt very summery which was nice as the sun was just coming out again! 

Weekend Inspiration

Have no motivation to revise - even though my exams start on Monday. So I've been scrolling through tumblr, just a few things that I came across...

Leona Lewis

Last night, my mum and I went to see Leona Lewis in Sheffield - she is one of my idols, since childhood, and even though I wouldn't particularly listen to her music now, I still had to go and see her. The night before I went, my boyfriend said to me apparently she is wearing a crazy red coat. I instantly thought, that sounds awesome. And in fact it was. She came on stage in the darkness and when the lights and curtains drew up, she was standing in a long dress (not coat) in bright red with a slit up her leg; it was beautiful, as were her 3 other outfits she changed into during the show! The second was also quite extravagant - simple black trousers matched with a long sleeved black crop top, with a white half a collar. The white detail added the extra effect, and this was my favourite look. Thirdly was a long, elegant, flowing bright pink dress - not my favourite, purely because bright pink chiffon isn't a personal 'wow factor'. And finally, to my surprise, she came back out for the encore in a plain black jumpsuit and over it was a black cape with a sequin lining.
This came to my surprise, and almost horror, because my original idea (now changed) for my prom outfit, this Summer, was to have a plain black dress with a cape over it. Also, earlier that day I had been trailing through Vogue's most recent pictures on the internet, and on the catwalk was exactly what i had in mind - a black chiffon cape, secured by a large ribbon bow. Now, I wanted to change my mind immediately and have the cape as I realised it wasn't just a crazy idea of mine, but now other people were showing it was becoming a trend! However, as I already have my new outfit, I decided to stick with this.
Overall the concert was really good. Unfortunately all of my pictures aren't of very good quality - only taken on my phone. But another thing I really liked was the back drop scenery - the shapes and 3D effect gave an edge to the show and her music.

Vogue Festival

The past weekend I spent Friday and Saturday in London, in particular to attend the Vogue Festival in association with Vertu. As the event took place on Saturday and Sunday and I only had tickets to a few of Saturday's talks, on Friday we spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Kensington high street, which was beautiful - as shown in the first picture. The streets of houses, the shops - all of the architecture was a combination of modern and traditional style which created a beautiful high street of the area of London. After a little bit of shopping, we headed back to a friends, who lives in the area, to stay for the night and chilled out before the busy day we had ahead at the Vogue Festival! 

On Saturday morning we caught the train to Waterloo and made our way to the Southbank Centre, where the festival was taking place. As we were one of the few that had arrived early for one of the first talks, there was not many others around; except for fashion and street style photographers that were capturing the shots of the chic ladies and men that were entering the centre. The first talk we had tickets to was titled, 'Can Fashion Change The World?' described as a talk of "fun, philanthropy and fearlessness" and nonetheless, this is what it brought to the audience. With a panel of fashion experts including: Livia Firth, Katharine Hamnett, Tom Craig and the vision that is Vivienne Westwood. Each of them told their story of how fashion can change the world, highlights of this talk were Livia Firth mentioning the hat company, Pachacuti (who are from my town) as being a part of changing the world through fair-trade fashion. And also the delights of Dame Westwood rambling on about all of her experiences and passion, for fashion being a part of making the world a better place. 

Before the second talk, we had a couple hour gap where we wandered around the festival where you could take part in a cover shoot with Chanel accessories, and have a make-over and your hair done by Dior professionals; also there was Vogue's very own cafe and shop. Despite not taking part in any of these activites, they looked like fun (but the queues were so long!) so we took a stroll along the Southbank and grabbed a bite to eat instead.

We arrived back to the centre for talk 2: Paul Smith and Alexa Chung. I was looking forward to this the most as it included on of Britain's incredible designers, Smith, and also a personal fashion icon of my own, Chung. Paul Smith was very inspirational and a seemed to be a really nice guy! At the end of the talk the questions were opened up to the audience, many of the fashion students asked for him to come and do talks at their universities and he was delighted to - so hopefully in the future there may be a chance for me to hear another one of his inspiring talks again. 

The final talk we attended was about street-fashion and blogging, with Susie "Bubble" Lau, Anna Dello Russo and Garance Dore. They each shared their experiences of blogging and how they were captured, or captured themselves, to become street-style icons. 

This motivated me to start writing on my blog again - so I thought I would create a completely new one!