Giveaway: Two Tickets to London Fashion Weekend

The lovely people over at Lavazza (official sponsors of London Fashion Weekend) have very kindly offered to send one A Girl, A Style reader and their friend to this season’s London Fashion Weekend at Somerset House. While Fashion Week is only open to fashion industry press and buyers, tickets to London Fashion Weekend, which directly follows Fashion Week at the same venue, are open to anyone. There are catwalk shows, exhibitions, beauty treats and designer shopping (usually at heavily discounted prices normally reserved for industry-only sample sales). It really is tremendously fun and if you can’t get to London Fashion Week, then these tickets are the next best thing.

TO ENTER:

1) Let me know why you want to win and what you’re most excited about at London Fashion Week/end;
2) Be following A Girl, A Style on either Twitter, Facebook, Bloglovin’, Tumblr or Instagram (for iPhone/iPad). Bonus points for more than one – just let me know in the comment box where you follow.

And though it’s not required, for a bonus entry tell me what you want to see more or less of on A Girl, A Style (or if you like it just as it is, what you most enjoy).

The Fine Print: Prize is for one A Girl, A Style reader and their friend (valued at approximately £60). Winner must be either London-based, or able to get to London on Friday 23rd September to redeem the prize. Prize is for Friday evening entry to London Fashion Weekend only, and does not include travel. Giveaway will close on at 10pm BST Monday 12 September, and winners will be notified shortly thereafter (don’t forget to include your email address so that I can contact you if you win). I will be checking and judging all entries myself.

Good luck!

Love, Miss B xx

*UPDATE: There are so many good entries that I’ve decided to giveaway two sets of tickets. Please note however that the tickets are for London Fashion Weekend only, and not the main London Fashion Week (which is only open to fashion press and buyers).

Pearls, Pastels & The Secret Garden

One of my favourite things about this summer in Cambridge has been my regular midweek dates with my dear friend S – whom I have known since I was school, and who always seems to end up in the same part of the world as me. Happily, S is a fellow at one of the grandest of the Cambridge colleges, granting her a golden key to one of my favourite secret gardens.

Each time, I cycle over to her college, where we get a very non-grown-up supper (usually comprising little more than ice cream) and retreat to the garden to say hello to the happy bees in their hives and laze about on the emerald green lawns until the golden sun sinks into the trees. I treasure these times, both for the happy summer memories they are creating, and for the idyllic time it allows us away from the frenetic pace of our day jobs.

When I think about it, I’ve been trying to create moments just like these for as long as I can remember. As a child, I used to put on my fairy dresses and spend far too many days sitting amongst the flowerbeds, throwing tea parties for all my friends (both real and imaginary). And try as I might, this garden always invokes in me the same urges. So while fairy dresses no longer seem socially acceptable (honestly, grown-ups just don’t know how to have fun sometimes), I put on my adult equivalent in the form of a sugared almond pink top, twinkly jewels and a dolly bun. The talk these days is usually of men and shoes (rather than ballet and teddies), but sitting there amongst the bumblebees and the hydrangeas in a secret garden that feels all our own, the feeling is just as lovely as childish tea parties.

Wearing: Topshop blouse and trousers, Mulberry bow booties, vintage swarovski necklace, the most perfect rope of pearls (courtesy of Jersey Pearl, and which I have barely taken off in weeks), Michael Kors watch, Mimco bangle, Alex Monroe birdy ring, the smile of a girl who has had her dose of Vitamin D.

I’d love to know how you create your own summer memories and moments of idyllic bliss?

Love, Miss B xx

* For those not familiar, Cambridge University is technically comprised of 31 colleges, each of which has a remarkably unique character and spectacular Hogwarts-esque grounds. The oldest and grandest each have their own secret garden, which unless accompanied by a college don, are strictly off-limits to tourists and outsiders.

A Weekend in St James: Grand Hotels & Breakfast at Laduree

Last week, one of my dear friends from Australia was visiting me. Her last two days in London were just the excuse I needed to have one of those decadent London weekends that err on the side of touristy just enough to remind me why I love this city so much.

Since the weekend was all about glamorous London, it was only appropriate that we started it with a girly sleepover at a grand old London hotel. After waking in the St Ermin’s Hotel in St James (top), we started the morning with a stroll through beautiful St James’ Park, where I can never help but to stop to talk to the ducks and the pink pelicans and the squirrels and take in the wonderful view on the bridge across the lake.

On the other side, the Mall, with it’s fluttering Union Jack flags, was being blocked off for a Royal procession (if one must be delayed, it might as well be for a fabulous reason…) just as we needed to cross, so we were forced to detour down in front of Buckingham Palace just as the Royal Guards trotted past on their glossy horses. Though I normally try my hardest to avoid anything with the label ‘tourist attractions’, there really is something about being in the throng of the tourists watching the British pomp and ceremony that is the Changing of the Guard that made me feel again like the wide-eyed and excited child that I was on my first trip to London in the 80s; a wonderful reminder that just once in a while, we should be a tourist in our own cities. Afterwards, it was to Green Park where, given the glorious blue skies of the morning, the green striped deck chairs where all the rage.

Once at the exit by The Ritz, we skipped across Piccadilly to Burlington Arcade, where croissants and pots of tea were calling our names for breakfast (and where obviously, I picked up a box of jewel-like macarons to take home with me. It would have been rude not to…). As my friend is on the good end of a crazy Australian-UK exchange rate, we beelined for our mutual mothership (aka. Chanel) on Bond Street, where there was lots of shoe-trying on to be had (I must have a masochistic streak, teasing myself in such a way).

Afterwards, we pressed our noses against the windows of Tiffany (where there are the most heart-warming real love stories in each window at the moment), walked to Miu Miu (for more bank balance torture in the form of glittery shoes so lovely I actually gasped at the windows), and then to the charming little Coco Maya (which I spoke about here) for lunch and chocolates.

Since it felt like all we’d done is eat sugar all day, we grabbed a pair of Boris Bikes and spent the afternoon cycling the back streets of Mayfair, discovering tiny mews and secret gardens until the sun went down.

I’d love to know how you spend a day being a tourist in your own city?

Love, Miss B xx