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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