Fashion Events | Vanity Claire

ClaireMarch 12, 2014

Nuvo Masquerade Ball & Fashion Show

Last night we were lucky enough to be invited to a charity masquerade ball at Nuvo bar in aid of Birmingham’s Children Hospital. The event was organised by the wonderful girls who study fashion at BCU and featured everything from a fashion show and dancers to topless butlers, henna and a photobooth. Drinking on a work night? Never a good idea. But when it’s for charity? HELLO VODKA (just doing it for the kids, you understand).

The show was hosted by the beautiful Miss Birmingham 2013, Rachel Barker, who we were lucky enough to meet before at the fashion event at Lilly-Lou. She did an amazing job and it was lovely catching up with her after the fashion show – even if she is so glossy and tall that she makes us feel like we’ve just rolled round in a bin (which to be honest, we often have).

(It’s a hard job being Miss Birmingham, isn’t it Rachel?!)

The whole event was brilliantly organised and everyone had a great time. We got chatting to some lovely people, including Kirsty who you might recognise from this series of Take Me Out, and of course the girls from BCU. Drinks were flowing and the photobooth was used far too much.

Like the drunk Cinderellas we are, we needed to dash off by midnight to catch our train home – but luckily not before some of the winners of the raffle were called out. Errr, guess who bagged a little £50 Primark voucher?!
Yeah, so my new address is Smug Lane, ChuffedAsShitVille.

Overall the night was a huge success and a great amount of money was raised for Birmingham Children’s Hospital. A big thank you to the girls from BCU for organising such a wonderful event and for inviting us! You can follow their Twitter account @BricoleurEvents to keep up to date with their future fundraising efforts – then you too can do things like this and feel no sense of shame at all – because IT’S FOR CHARITY.

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ClaireDecember 15, 2013

Fashion Evening at Lilly-Lou

At the end of last week, Lauren and I were lucky enough to be invited to a night of glamour and cupcakes (FYI our favourite types of night) at the beautiful Lilly-Lou store in Shirley, Solihull. We were invited by the gorgeous Holly from i2Style, who we’ve been Twitter chums with for ages, and who works in the shop (which, by the way, is just as gorgeous – monochrome bling as far as the eye can see!)

Lilly-Lou specialises in all manner of evening dresses that are perfect for proms, weddings, parties or any other swanky occasion where you want to be looking smokin’ hot. There’s even a kids’ range with the most perfect princessy dresses for weddings or Communions.

(This picture is the only proof that Lauren and I were actually at the event; we came straight from a full day at work so were not feeling photo-friendly.)

Holly and the rest of the Lilly-Lou ladies put loads of effort into creating a really fun event for us all. Also attending the night was the stunning Rachael Barker, aka Miss Birmingham 2013. She looked absolutely amazing in one of the Lilly-Lou cocktail dresses, and was lovely to speak to as well. She also had one of the best heads of hair I’ve ever seen in my life, and has convinced me that I need to give nano-rings a try.

Also showing off their wares on the night was Annette from Tilly-Minx Vintage, who sells original vintage jewellery including necklaces, brooches and bracelets, and also hand crafts intricate combs, tiaras and corsages. There were also representatives from Always Charity, which is an amazing business set up to support the Lymphoma Association.

On top of aaaaaaaall of this, there was also champagne, cupcakes and a beautiful Christmassy performance by Megan-Louise and Keeley from Perfect 5th Events (Jingle Bell Rock was a personal highlight, though I had to resist the urge for a bit of Mean Girls-esque thigh-slapping). It was also attended by some other bloggers, including the lovely Emma whose blog you can read here, as well as others who we unfortunately didn’t get a chance to chat to!

Overall it was a lovely evening showcasing some brilliant local talent. The dresses at Lilly-Lou are absolutely stunning and the girls who work there are all lovely – I’m fully confident that anybody who goes in there looking for a dress will receive nothing but the best service and help. Here are the lovely ladies with Miss Birmingham:

A huge thank you to everyone at Lilly-Lou, particularly Holly, for organising such a fun event!

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ClaireDecember 10, 2013

Clothes Show Live | Fashion, Beauty & Half Naked Men

Hey there you sex bombs. If you read my outfit of the day post from Sunday then you’ll know that Lauren and I attended The Clothes Show Live in Birmingham at the weekend. We were grand masters of the blag and managed to nab ourselves press passes for the day, giving us access to the show, superb seats at the Fashion Theatre and free tea and biscuits in the press lounge (if you know us then you’ll know that was the bit we were most excited about).

Upon arrival at the NEC we were directed to the press area where we were given our fancy passes for the day. As you can see, they looked uber profesh and fancy…

Even if our blog name was spelled wrong on mine (Claire from Style Lingo still had a tip top day though)…

The press lounge was full of important folk with laptops and expensive photography equipment – and we were also lucky enough to bump into the lovely Nokhuthula from Crystal Cosmic Chic (hellooooo if you’re reading!)

During the day we attended the Fashion Theatre catwalk show, which was sponsored by Alcatel One Touch. Our press passes ensured us superb seats for this – we were almost frowing, except some berk with a camera as big as my head nabbed the seats before us so we ended up one row back. We decided to keep our diva personalities in check and resisted the urge to biff him with our handbags though. The show was extremely theatrical and impressive, with lots of amazing looks and strutting interspersed with uh-mazing choreography. And fit men. Quite a few fit men.

The main lure of The Clothes Show is obviously all of the amazing fashion and beauty brands that are there flaunting their wares and coercing us to part ways with our funds. On the fashion side of things there was a strong vintage and streetwear presence with bargains a-plenty, though there were also recognisable brands such as Glamorous. Lauren and I bought one or two bits, but in the interest of intrigue and suspense we’ll make you wait to see what those pieces are.

I think we can all agree that this is a great new look for Lauren.

A huge area of the exhibition is dedicated to the world of makeup and beauty. A lot of the big brands were there, including Rimmel, Bare Minerals, Barry M, Models Own, Fake Bake and so on and so forth, as well as the smaller brands that are big in social media and the blogosphere including Sally’s Glitz and Glam, Lauren’s Way and Jelly Pong Pong.

The main bargains of the show were definitely to be found amongst the make-up brands, a lot of which were offering goodie bags for around £10 that contained products worth up to the £60. These were being snapped up all over the joint, though we managed to show exceptional self control and run past these stands at a Mo Farah speed.

Other exhibitors also included universities, Select modelling agency (obviously our little 5 foot nothing bodies were signed up IMMEDIATELY) and a smorgasbord of other companies – which might be my way of saying I’ve forgotten who else we saw. Honestly, there was so much to take in that you can and do spend hour after hour browsing all of the aisles.

Throughout the day, there were also a number of other catwalk shows going on, from high street to designer to graduate shows. Overall it was a really fun day, and I definitely recommend The Clothes Show to anyone who hasn’t been before. At £28 a ticket, I do think it’s a tad pricey for essentially a day of shopping, but it’s certainly an impressive exhibition and the shows and ~~TOWIE stars~~ celebrity photo opportunities are all bonuses that give the event that little something extra.

Oh, and here some photos of half naked men for you to peruse. You’re welcome…

Have any of you been to The Clothes Show Live before? What do you think?

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ClaireSeptember 29, 2013

The Show: Ten | Celebrating the Bullring’s Birthday

Hello ladies and gents!

Claire and I officially had a Day of Fun yesterday, in the form of hitting up the Bullring’s 10th birthday party. I don’t know about you, but most of the tenth birthdays I have attended have involved screaming children, deflated balloons and bits of birthday cake squished into unmentionable places. Not many have involved Mollie King and male models sitting down in front of me on a catwalk. Safe to say, you can guess which I prefer…

Us Stylingo gals have big love for the Bullring. Our days at the University of Birmingham were often spent lurking around Topshop debating whether a dress was a better use for our loans than buying the latest edition of the Canterbury Tales. In fact, when Claire and I first met during first year, we bumped into each other in the Bullring and realised that we were two kindred souls…mostly because we both like shopping alone like the antisocial weirdos we are.

So needless to say, we were mega excited when we were invited to attend The Show: Ten, which was a catwalk show giving everyone a headsup on autumn/winter trends and hosted by the insanely beautiful Mollie. We donned on some jazzy outfits, hopped on the train and here is a little sneak peak of what our day was like.

Tribal Dress : Your Eyes Lie | Black ankle boots: F&F | Gold chain: eBay

And here are a few of our favourite outfits from the show. The idea was that they showcased 10 autumn/winter trends, which as you would imagine included lots of tartan, PVC, pastels and animal print. It was most excellent. Oh yeah, and just in case you hadn’t noticed – we were FROWING. Huzzah!

If I am ever this close to Mollie again, it will probably be because ~~I’m violating a restraining order~~ I have become the sixth member of the Saturdays. We then obviously went out for Saturday afternoon cocktails, because what would a Day of Fun be without a few fruit based alcoholic beverages?

And finally, like the classy birds we will always be, we bought 99p baguettes and legged it to Primark. You can take the homegirls out of Coventry but…

Happy birthday Bullring, we love you with all of our tiny hearts and will continue to give you money until we die or you decide that Pilot is a shop worth including in your vast array of establishments.

ClaireMay 24, 2013

The Young British Designers Event at RBH.

Yesterday, Claire and I (as well as our chauffeur, I mean boss, Gary) had the brilliant opportunity of heading over to RBH for the presentation event of Young British Designers. RBH is a creative agency based in the Midlands who have worked in connection with YBD since its launch in 2010. For those who don’t know (where have you been?!), YBD is all about championing the many talents of young designers in Britain and showing off collections from emerging British fashion designers.

And what a day we had! After sneakily re-applying makeup in the toilets at work and choking the office with Black XS, we were off with our really cool Perspex invites firmly in hand. Even though we didn’t win the YBD outfit competition, Claire’s loud ‘AH, GO ON THEN’ when we were offered a glass of champagne got the event of to a great start. We mooched about for a bit and met some lovely people before legging it upstairs to where the clothes were. I have about three words to say about this: beautiful neon bags.

There was a great mix of stuff from last season as well as current spring/summer pieces. My personal favourites were the spring/summer collection of shoes and bags. OH MY GAHD, I nearly died with love for a pair of wedges that had neon straps. I may have spent slightly too long staring at them with love and adoration, stroking them and declaring that I will never love like this again. I didn’t actually stroke them; I’m not a mad person. I am a young professional who can behave in a classy and sophisticated way and not drop cupcakes on the floor. ANYWAY, Claire’s personal fave of the day was a blue box bag and had she bought it, I’d have stolen it and claimed that the stray cat we occasionally let into our house (fondly named Snoop Catt) must have eaten it. Unfortunately, we were too poor to make any purchases (darn you payday, how dare you come a day late) but Gary bought a lovely bag for his mum.

Shop the Young British Designers collections here

After having a browse of the collections, we headed to the cocktail bar for a mojito or five and had a play with the tweet mirror (which was AWESOME, by the way). There were a couple of talks as well, one by RBH’s Debra Hepburn and one by Beverley Nielson. Beverly heads up the Birmingham Made Me Expo, which is really awesome and you should all check out. She’s also worked at Vogue in New York so all in all, a very interesting person.

For those who are interested, I wore a snake print midi dress from Missguided, my trusty black leather jacket from Miss Selfridge and a pair of teal heels. Claire went for a navy midi dress from Topshop, a chunky gold necklace and Kurt Geiger heels.

It was a fabulous day and we’re very excited for what’s to come with YBD.

So, big thank you to RBH (and the green bow-tied mixologists, of course).