Saying goodbye

Went out to a great pub last night- the Builders Arms in Chelsea. To wish one of the girls goodbye- she's leaving head office to work in one of our country stores which is an easy walk to work for her instead of the horrendous 4 hour round trip to central London. Good luck Vikki!

When we got to the table, I saw these great beer mats, so I took one of each. They are just great! I want them framed and put up on my wall! Which I think I might try and do....

Work Sample sales

Working in a retail head office is great! I've worked there for just under 3 years now and one of the great perks of the job are sample sales. I know that different companies manage their sample sales differently- some open out to the public (like Ted Baker last week) and some have exclusive sales just for staff (like where I work- ASOS, Topshop and Laura Ashley too)

Seeing as we were all being made redundant, we had our final last EVER sample sale last week. It was crazy but I'm glad that I worked with people who were courteous and polite- no pushing was going on, it was all 'excuse me' and 'sorry, am I in your way?'. But I got some great stuff, which is probably why in future outfit posts, I'm going to refer to many of the clothes as 'Otto Sample Sale'. Where possible, I'll try and reference any brands.

BTW, if you really want to look for the clothes I've bought from the Otto sample sale, please check out: freemans, grattan, oli, kaleidoscope or look again. These are the brands I worked with and therefore all the samples have directly come from them. Also, seeing as a lot won't fit me, I'll be posting some things on e-bay, so watch this space!

At the moment, everything is piled up in the corner of my bedroom, just waiting to be sorted out! (as seen above). However, I have a few interesting prints and items:

Sequins










Spots

Floral Patterns

Random Patterns


Finally I have a 'curtain' of black fringing, which is just waiting for me to attach it to something!!

The new barnet

Thought I'd try out something different with my hairstyle and do and 'Amy' but totally changing the dress sense so that I wouldn't look like I was going to a fancy dress party the whole day!!!

Wore this walking about town. The bf and I actually walked 5 miles from Canary Wharf to Liverpool street station! My boots rock, I thought as they had a moderate heel on the (3 inches) that my feet would ache- not at all!

Necklace: Accessorize (a birthday pressie from my friends)
Bag: a Limited edition Laura Ashley bag (I have a friend who works there and got me this in the sample sale)
Grey top: 55 DSL
Dress: Topshop Unique
Tights: Topshop
Boots: Hugo Boss (without fringing)- one day I'll show you the fringing on it, its so cool!

Monochrome + red

Another work outfit: feeling a fifties-esque vibe today.

Cardigan: Warehouse
Dress: ASOS.com
Tights: M&S
Shoes: bought in Kingston at a cute shop run by a lovely Korean lady. I think her brand is called 'Woona'

Rainbow Bright

Wore this to work.

Necklace: Accessorize (present from my last work place)
Jumper: Mango
Dress: Arrogant Cat sample sale (don't actually know if they brought it out in shops)
Tights: Uniqlo
Boots: Office

Weather was grey so I thought I'd brightenn up the office!

Work outfit

Leather Jacket: Oli.co.uk
Cowl neck tank top: Asos.co.uk
Dress/ Tunic: Bought in Singapore
Necklace: Accessorize
Leggings: Tabio
Yellow socks: Vivienne Westwood
Boots: KG

Wore this to work the other day.

It's been a long time....

I'm sorry for the lack of recent blogging- unfortunately it was not due to the fashion weeks, as much as I would have liked it to have been.... I have just been away to New York and also quite busy as my boss is off this week and I've been preparing for Paris!

Although I made a list of very interesting shops that I would have liked to have visited in NY, I only managed a handful of these, probably due to the fact that I stuck all the addresses in my map that was in my guide book and one of my friends forgot my guide book in a yellow cab. To be honest, I didn't buy as much as I was expecting to as I went out with 2 suitcases- one empty and the other 1/2 full with all of my clothes, toiletries etc. I came back with 2 half full suitcases!! I was expecting to come back with 2 full to bursting cases but never mind.... at least I saved some money!

Pics and a more detailed list of things that we did will come soon!

Update...

Been quite busy this week, so no time to update the blog... and this update is only a bit of rant rather than a proper entry.

The other day, the fire alarms went off in our office building so we all had to evacuate into the pouring rain- luckily I grabbed my jacket and umbrella on the way out, so I wasn't one of those poor people standing outside getting cold and wet.

We all thought that it was set off as a mistake by the security as we couldn't see or smell anything burning, so we were quite anxious to get back into the building- lots of Spring/ Summer 2008 planning to be doing for deadlines this week although the break was a welcome one- it didn't come at the best of times! The firemen came in their engine, unfortunately girls- they were quite old and not fit looking, so we didn't even have any nice men to ogle at while waiting!!!

Once they declared that there wasn't a fire, we were all allowed to go back into the building and get back to work. An e-mail was sent around later on that afternoon say that the fire alarm was triggered at the back of the building due to DUST!!! Needless to say, no one was impressed by that...

How dusty does the place have to be so that it triggers the fire alarm?? I'd say, extremely!!! Grrrrr... stupid cleaners....

Anyways, just had to get rant out in the open!

Finished!!!

Finally finished my project... the brief was:

'Through creative research, your task is to identify the main design themes presently in stores for S/S 07. You are to highlight the key focus points in language appropriate to the trend forecaster where detail is of the utmost importance.
Present your ideas in a creative and exciting way. Identify where the trends may have come from and evaluate how they might evolve for A/W 07 and therefore 'trend track' in preparation for the new season. You may also like to include relevant statistics or demographics to support your early A/W predictions.
Please be imaginative and Good Luck!'

Here are images from my project, I hope you like!