Colorize me

At long last, the story of last Thursday night, accompanied by photos from my iPhone. Let's read on, shall we? We hit the Ray-Ban Colorize launch party at Ultra Lounge at Selfridges and what a night it was - greeted at the doors with free-flowing mojitos and beer, we knew we were in for a good evening, short as it would be. This was further added to by the giant bowls of jelly beans dotted strategically around the room, yum.

The event itself was to launch the new Ray-Ban Colorize Kit(available exclusively at Selfridges) which allows you to customise your pair by drawing on the arms and frames. It was also a preview of an exhibition of Fender guitars that have been customised by 10 artists that will be auctioned in aide of Oxfam later in the year.



Apart from Jelly Bellies and free booze, they also had areas where you could try on different Wayfarers and get your polaroid taken, cool wall prints, plus Esser and DJ sets from Mystery Jets and Lou & Nova for music-slash-entertainment.



What they didn't tell you about was the small area tucked in a corner where you could go and test out the Colorize Kit on your own pair of Ray-Bans. Word began to spread through the crowd that this area existed and once it was out, people started flocking like bees to honey. Unfortunately, the free pairs ran out quickly, sending those trolling for freebies scrambling at a display unit that was purely for trying on (but not manned). Don't you know that in these hard times, fashionistas will fight for free sunnies? We witnessed one girl having a pair of aviators prised out of her hands after she'd already drawn on them. Ouch.

Ambling back into the room, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that Esser were actually pretty good. Often at these kind of thing, you get bands playing who are achingly cool but also painfully shit. We even had a little boogie.



I'm even debating checking them out again, which doesn't happen often. While we were bopping along, we noticed various highly recognisable faces in the crowd, including the following: Jo Wood, Alexa Chung, Nick Grimshaw and drumroll please, Amy Winehouse, fresh from the Caribbean. I know that you've probably skimmed through the above to get to the photos so I'll just get on with posting these:


Alexa Chung, who spent the evening being pretty low key and watching Esser.



Above: Amy Winehouse, sucking her thumb, after she had run around, leaping (literally) on Wood, Grimshaw and a variety of other people in the crowd. She did look far healthier in the flesh, with a slight tan and fuller figure but she is clearly as mad as a box of frogs.

Having casually stalked Wino, we got bored and decided to play with some sunnies at one of the trying-on points. My partner in crime took the following photo of me trying on aviators:



You got a Polaroid snapped (which you were encouraged to write something witty on) wearing a pair for their wall:



Opposite that wall, they had another featuring lots of photos of presumably famous people wearing Ray-Bans:



Having wandered around for a while, we had to leave to hit another meeting and thus missed a certain 'face' so desperate for some free Ray-Bans that she started clambering up to help herself to a fistful of sunnies at a five finger discount. One of the chandeliers, pre-mugging:



However, it was once we'd left (sans goodie bag-boo!) that things started to get very interesting indeed. Lurking by the loos, waiting for my friend, I couldn't help noticing a familiar beehive floating around the Cath Kidston section of the Lower Ground Floor, picking up pretty much everything like a floral-obsessed klepto. I'm not sure if the woman marching Amy Winehouse back to her minders in this photo is the staff member for CK, a random member of the public or one of her own team:



FYI: Amy is absolutely miniscule. I'm small myself but she's teeny tiny, even with the beehive. As we left Selfridges a short while later, the girls walking out of the door in front of us got a serious case of papping. I'm sure that there are several photos lurking on WENN of me looking slightly confused - if only I knew who it was.

Now, as lame as it is, I'm going to retire even though it's Friday night and I should - according to British tradition - be having the time of my life being sick in an alley somewhere. Next time - Quiksilver for Women's gig-slash-launch party and the bad things I did at the Burberry Sample Sale.