As London Fashion Week comes to an end, London Fashion Weekend begins. For four days the Saatchi Gallery plays host to the huge fashion pop up which offers the chance to shop, listen to industry insiders and even attend a catwalk show.
You can therefore understand how excited I was when I won tickets for myself and Pippa courtesy of a Swatch Twitter competition and these landed on the doormat!
After managing to withstand the freezing cold and blustery winds for outfit photos we arrived at the gallery and were soon in our element browsing the racks, chatting to the exhibitors…
…and (of course!) taking the odd selfie!
I found the Designer Concessions room to be a bit like shopping in Harrods or Liberty’s: nice to look at and dream of one day owning, but even with huge mark downs still utterly out of my price range! (You’d still be looking at a starting point of £300 to £400 for a Chloe Handbag).
The Contemporary gallery offered a range of more affordable designers however and I found it a really great way to discover ones that I hadn’t come across previously. I’m not entirely sure that this is a good thing as this stunner of a shirt from Miss Patina caught my eye leading me to begin stalking them on Instagram. Now I’m coveting their entire collection!
We didn’t end up getting any of the free treatments on the day as both the Maybelline and Toni and Guy stands were heaving by the time we arrived, however for the most part the whole event had a really pleasant, relaxed atmosphere and the galleries were laid out well and felt spacious.
Our silver passes didn’t include entrance to a catwalk show but we did manage to secure prime seats for a Q&A talk with the photographer extraordinaire Rankin. He has captured everyone from Kate Moss, to the Queen and fellow blogger Lily Pebbles last year too! I found him rather fascinating to listen to – he was full of behind of the scenes stories.
Even though the room held a decent amount of people the chat still felt quite intimate and exclusive (it’s always great to feel a little bit special now isn’t it?!).
After a couple of hours we felt like we’d seen all we wanted to see and were starting to get rather hungry, so we went off in search of The Good Life Eatery, keeping our fingers crossed that there wouldn’t be too much of a queue. The venue is beautiful but very narrow and with limited seating but we only had to wait for about 20 minutes for a table to free up much to the relief of our rumbling tums.
…the other 1% of me still cries a little at the thought of the £6.50 price tag for a drink that doesn’t even have alcohol in it.
Then again we were in Chelsea!
