LFW SS10: Where the hell am I?

You may be puzzled by my disappearance during London Fashion Week. As hardened readers will know, twice a year I relinquish my lacklustre blogging and go hardcore during LFW. However, this year I'm blogging for my work place and unfortunately, I cannot face doing two separate lots of photo editing each night, nor can I write coherently for four hours straight. So I'll make you guys a deal. I'll post links to my official efforts each night and then I'll do a round up of everything next week, when it's all over.

Sound good? Yeah? Great. Now, go read here:

LFW Friday - click here

LFW Saturday - click here

LFW AW09: Sunday part deux

It's been over twelve hours since today's adventure began and I've just arrived home at close to 10 o'clock. To say I'm tired is an understatement. All of my friends think it's terribly glam and yes, sometimes it is but there is also a lot of standing around in the cold, waiting for the clipboard bitches to declare you worthy of entering the venue.

Anyhoo, now that I've aired most of my bitterness, let's get to the shows, shall we? I promised you photos earlier from Betty Jackson this morning, I believe. First up, the front row:




And now, some clothes:







My personal favourite item was the handbag-backpack bag, which was a fun piece but I'm not sure how it would translate to every day life. Either you'd get pickpocketed constantly or end up tripping over on the backpack straps. But fun nonetheless.

After Betty Jackson, I had a little break and whizzed over to High Road House in Chiswick for brunch with my previously mentioned and much neglected friends before heading back for a blowdry at Toni & Guy's onsite press salon. It's a little oasis of calm where you can lie back and enjoy a little bit of follicle pampering. I also love it as it means that I don't have to wash my hair tonight and because I'm slightly unhealthily addicted to their Resurrection Style Dust. Seriously, I'm not being paid to say this, ever since I discovered it a few weeks ago, I love it.

From the salon, I had to run to Eley Kishimoto. From the second I saw the invite for this, I was curious. Styled like a retro boarding pass with an indian print pattern, it was very true to the show which featured lots of 1960s style air stewardess references from the cute skirt suits to the felt hats worn with lots of different outfits, as well as their signature graphic prints. Pre-show, they also had sound effects featuring tannoy calls and other airport related noises which were fun but made it difficult to make the usual fill-in calls as I waited. Anyway, enough gabbling, let's have some photos:







After the show, I made a mad dash to the press lounge to check my emails for all of thirty seconds and literally barely made one of the last buses heading to Aquascutum, where a guard of dishy men in suits and black overcoats lined the way. The wait was pretty long and the cold was starting to creep in, which made people slightly irritable but all was forgiven once we got inside and the show started. While I was waiting outside, I spotted Alexa Chung and Anna Piaggi heading in and must say that Alexa has the skinniest colt-like legs I've ever seen.







On our way out of the show, I couldn't help but be tempted by a photo of the dishy men and after very little cajoling, my colleagues leapt between them for a photo op:



We had a little time before Jaeger so went to grab some dinner at the cheap chinese round by South Ken station and then headed back to the BFC tent once more for our final show of the day. We got there in the nick of time and grabbed our seats. Front row for the show featured Alexa Chung (again), Erin O'Connor and Tamsin Egerton, I couldn't see any more as we arrived so late. At least this year we weren't as late as last seasn, they slammed the door in my face.







After Jaeger, owing to the fact that we only had tickets for PPQ's party and not the show, we hopped in my car and headed off to the Met Bar's pink drinks party for a quick mingle. It was a truly awesome affair with mini chorizo hot dogs, mini chips and tempura veg in cones, candy floss and lots of other tasty treats. However, the cold, tiredness and the fact that I was driving (and a little bitter from lack of tickets) meant I headed home rather than continue the night at PPQ's pose fest.

And now it's almost midnight and let me tell you how glad I am to be lying down right now, before it starts all over again at Ossie Clark at 9am tomorrow. Before I finish, here's what I wore today: Blazer - River Island, sequin tee - Kate Moss for Topshop, Jeans - Topshop, shoes (replacing leopard print Office ones which ripped open my feet) - Topshop, clutch bag - Bodhi, skull ring - Butler & Wilson.



At last, to bed. Hurrah!

LFW: Sunday in Pictures

I promised more pictures, so here they are. Many are blurry and I apologise for that - I'm working with aged technology.

Spijkers en Spijkers






Topshop Unique









Ossie Clark




PPQ





















Also spotted at PPQ:

- Nicola Roberts from Girls Aloud. Her new hair would look good in Editorial - it kind of reminds me of those Miu Miu adverts featuring Lindsay Lohan - but it just looks ridiculously fake in the harsh light of day.

Adele - only fleetingly over peoples heads.

LFW: Sunday stories

Oof, I've just rolled in the door from a crazy day as your intrepid reporter at London Fashion Week, the first of six days of pure peacock watching. I started off the day at Spijkers en Spijkers at Vauxhall Fashion Scout this morning, a very interesting collection: lots of ruffles on everything. While I didn't really warm to the pinks and violets, I loved the dresses in oyster grey and peach and the fabulous ones that were studded all over. The second half heralded lots of leopard print, which the trashy side of me secretly loves just a little too much to be healthy. My favourite piece though was probably the black silk jumpsuit with tiny little hot pant shorts, you can see it in the final walk, unfortunately the quality is quite bad as my camera is pretty old and crappy:



After Spijkers, we jumped on a bus and headed over to Baker Street to go and check out Topshop Unique, one of the hottest tickets in town, in one of the most amazing venues:



Before the actual show started, they had a reception with lots of yummy miniature portions of traditional English grub - prawn cocktail, cod and chips, bubble and squeak, bread and butter pudding, all washed down with champagne. I was starving and grateful for the sustenance and bubbles - who wouldn't be?



Anyway, back to the clothes. The collection was really heavily 80s inspired - lots of bleached denim in the form of candy coloured jumpsuits and fun printed pieces like horse shoes and arrows through hearts on jackets, more jumpsuits and dresses. All of the models had hugely backcombed hair with scarves tied in them. One girl in a rust coloured ensemble had a matching denim jacket tied in her hair - sounds weird but it worked. My favourite pieces though were the backless jersey dresses with low hanging draped fabric. Not screamingly obvious but very sexy none the less.

In the front row, we spotted Alexa Chung, Peaches Geldof, Roisin Murphy and Cory Kennedy. I bumped into Cory after the show during the bottleneck to get out and when I mentioned that I liked her blog, she agreed to pose for a photo for mine. She was very sweet and patient when my camera messed up and waited until I got the snap I was after. I couldn't help noticing that she's also really tiny. We were both in flats and were pretty much eye-to-eye and I'm only 5'3". That just made me love her a little more:



Unfortunately, blogger has decided to mess up uploading videos for this evening, so I'll have to add some of the videos tomorrow. From Topshop (which ran late), we pegged it back across town to the tents for Ossie Clark.

I was amazed to see Alexa Chung in the front row in a completely different outfit to the one she'd worn to Topshop. The fashionistas sitting around me started to snipe about how it was a bit try hard but I bet every one of them would've loved the opportunity to change between shows, although I must admit I did see their point.

Ossie Clark featured lots of beautiful diaphanous dresses in rich jewely colours - pea green, burnt orange and deep purples, as well as his signature bold prints. Oh, and the embellishments. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. He had that stunning girl from the current Topshop ads walking too and for a brief moment, she made me buy into another dreamy beach life. Believe me, if I were built at a height where maxidresses didn't double as a street sweeper-slash-tent on me, I would so be in there, snapping everything up:

[OSSIE VIDEO WILL BE ADDED TOMORROW, HANG TIGHT!]

After Ossie, we had a short break where we had to do some work. I was glad not to be hopping onto any tubes or buses to march off to another destination and was glad just to plonk down for a while and file some copy before it was off to PPQ.



I've never seen the BFC so rammed. We had seats but in the loosest terms of the word. I had one butt cheek precariously balanced on the edge of a bench, legs in the aisle in order to avoid falling to the floor. And the show had started even before the models hit the runway.

Spotted on the front row: Jodie Harsh in amazing gold sequinned leggings, Victoria Hervey sitting with Russell Simmons (yeah, we couldn't figure it out either), Kimberley Stewart (in what appeared to be silver foil), Peaches Geldof (again, still don't like her), Pixie Geldof (interesting new haircut), Roisin Murphy (again) and Cory Kennedy (who had changed outfits), along with lots of people whose faces I knew but names I didn't.

I have a lot of photos from this show but I'll have to post most of them separately as otherwise this will officially be the longest post ever. I didn't love PPQ this season as much as I have in previous ones.

I think I may've been distracted by the elaborate hats. I am a firm believer that accessories should accentuate or make an outfit, not overshadow it. And this was most definitely a case of the latter. A shame really but I'll let you judge for yourselves when I post the videos tomorrow but here's a taster of one of the finer confections:



As I type, the PPQ party is currently kicking off in Piccadilly and I had intended to go but an exhausting day and some none too fresh sushi means that I think it's probably safer that I skip it and recover. I've also just heard that the queue is ridiculously long so I think it was a wise decision. It's another busy day tomorrow and I still need to figure out what I'm wearing. A fashionista's job is never done...