My first-hand experience of London Fashion Week - February 2011

Cute Mulberry tote

I am a very lucky girlie. Shall I tell you why? Well I'm going to anyway: I got to spend a few days working with the Cosmo fashion department at London Fashion Week (last week)! Now I know you've probably all read all the details of fashion week already (I went away on a teensy holiday straight afterwards you see, so unfortunately couldn't blog about it any earlier), so I shan't just tell you everything you'll have already read elsewhere, I'm just going to give you a brief summary of my experience: what I loved, learned and generally thought. Afterall, not every student gets to mingle with the FROW (that's front row, dahling) girls, do they?

First of all, I have never seen quite so many stylish, quirky, well-dressed people in one place in my life. It is aboslutely inspiring! You know if you go out to your local city centre on a Saturday afternoon, you'll come across the odd guy or girl who's got their own chic/quirky/down-right-stylish look going on? Well, Somerset House (the home of London Fashion Week, and a stunning building in itself) was over-run with these types. Seriously - some of the best people-watching you could ever hope for!

I met some really interesting folk while just hanging around at Somerset House in between shows and exhibitions and the like. For example, a charming youg man named Samuel Sasiharan. He's currently studying at Central St Martins (like many a top designer once did), and I was very excited to see him featured in the street-style section of The Daily (London Fashion Week's, erm, daily newspaper) from the previous day! Remember that name, folks, I reckon we may be seeing big things from him in the future. That same day, I started chatting to a lady who worked for Channel 4! (I tell ya, there were so many camera crews around - I definitely didn't try to walk in the background of as many as I could), and it turns out she was there filming for a new TV show that'll be aired in September with Mary Portas. You heard it here first. I also met lots of lovely fashion journalists and bloggers from around the world, all there with fascinating stories, ideas and advice. There were some guys I didn't particularly enjoy meeting - two men: one a diet specialist, and the other a fitness specialist, who work with models. They were downright creepy, and didn't half make me feel guilty for buying a hot chocolate from the amazing Tom's Deli in Somerset House (hey, at least it wasn't a full on slab of cake! I waited until they'd left...)

The lovely Paloma Faith

Ahh, and you've probably been waiting to hear this part - which celebrities did I see!?
Well - I'll just give you a rundown shall I? there was Joy (the latest winner of Britain's Next Top Model), Hilary Alexander (The Daily Telegraph's amazing fashion director, and a bit of an idol), Olivia Palermo (I nearly had a heart attack to be honest - she is SO beautiful, and has ridiculously sleek hair), Paloma Faith (who was so sweet, happily posing for pictures), Alexandra Shulman (the editor of British Vogue, whilst being bombarded by a camp little guy wanting to work there), Louise Redknapp (who is also beautiful... tiny though), Amber Rose (only the ex-girlfriend of Kanye West!), that Jason guy from Dancing On Ice, the judge off Masterchef - John Torode, is it?, Sasha Wilkins (AKA Liberty London Girl - one of my fave bloggers), Susie Lau (another brill blogger - Style Bubble), Yasmin Le Bon (looking gorgeously and enviably tanned... she looked right at me too!) and - rather randomly - that Laura (the annoying one) from the last series of The Apprentice. I think that was the lot! To be honest though, I could've been standing right next to Anna Wintour herself at some point and just not noticed.

Going to the fashion shows

Ashish - blurry but a kinda cool pic, no?

Marios Schwab

Amanda Wakeley

 I went to some incredible shows, including Ashish, Marios Schwab and Amanda Wakeley amongst others (OK, so maybe for a couple of them I just managed to charm my way in to standing at the back, but hey! You do what you gotta do - we can't all have FROW tickets!) I also went to some shows of designers I'd never heard of, but absolutely loved! For example, the polar opposites of Joanne Hynes and Christian Blanken. Joanne Hynes (who'd left us lots of sweeties in our goody bags - score!) was so wacky, with big, bold prints and lots of colour; whereas Christian Blanken was all about chic, simple, minimalist lines in monochrome. It's so exciting to discover new designers (new to me anyway), and I adored them both.

Joanne Hynes

Christian Blanken

The exhibitions of smaller designers all round Somerset House were brilliant too: I went round them with Cosmo's fabulous Natasha Guiotto and Sarah Katchis, photographing bits and pieces they liked and might potentially feature or use in shoots in future issues of Cosmo!

Natasha and Sarah doing their thang

What else? Well, I don't think I've ever drunk quite so much Glaceau Vitamin Water in my life! It was one of the sponsors of the whole shebang, and thus was readily available for free around Somerset House (naturally, as a student, I'm used to making the most of freebies.) On that note, I did pick up a few freebies from show goody bags and around the place - some didn't give anything at all (stingy? I suppose it is a recession blah blah blah...) - but I came away with little shampoos, conditioners, a notebook, and other little things like that. All very lovely. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, anyway!

To sum up, my experience of London Fashion Week (and I didn't even go to the whole of it) was downright AMAZEBALLS! I absolutely LOVED it, despite being completely exhausted. How top fashion folk do a whole week's worth, then fly off round the world to do it again, and again, whilst staying up late partying away, I'll never know (and I'm meant to be the young, energetic student!) Well, fingers crossed that in the future perhaps I could be doing all that too :)