Last month I was contacted by Luxemme who kindly sent me a dress of my choice from their Limited Collection- I chose the Cecile black bardot dress for its interestig structure and shape, it’s like nothing I own. Luxemme are a brand new online retailer for women’s fashion, and I want to show you all the results from taking Luxemme to Ladbroke Grove on its first trip out!
I was joined by my blogger babe Maryam and we had our photographers on board to take the shots- Paul ( my lovely partner) and Fayomi ( a London based fashion photographer).
Between the two of them we had all our angles covered and despite having to shoot in between showers of rain, it made for a great location and in the end the results were fantastic despite the weather! We used it to our advantage and created something I didn’t set out to do, but am so happy we did it!
The Cecile Bardot dress fit perfectly with the most popular blogging spot in London for fashion- Ladbroke Grove in Notting Hill. The Luxemme bardot dress is a sophisticated piece which you can dress up or down depending on where you’re going and who you’re with. I would definitely wear this little black dress on a date for example paired with some killer heels. (Karen Millen of course!) I could also see myself wearing this to a blogger’s event too. I would put the dress with a great set of earrings and pile my hair up to really expose the neck area and flaunt its lovely design.
Here are some of the shots we took in Ladbroke Grove and the square, I really recommend the location to any new fashion bloggers wanting to set a great London scene with their photos.
Here are my two favourites from Fayomi’s shots:
And here are Paul’s shots:
Along with the Luxemme dress, my boots were Karen Millen, my jacket Forever 21 and the glitter bag was Boohoo. A mixture of designer and high street is definitely shaping up to be my signature look I think!
I cannot thank Luxemme enough for working with me, I adore this limited edition dress and I’m sure this won’t be the only Luxemme piece featured on the blog this year!
Saharasplash X
I received this product for free for my honest opinion and review
I want to tell you all about what a fantastic time I had on the 5th December when I went to the Blogger’s Xmas event organised by Soeursdeluxe. The London air was very biting that day, so I layered up with a polo neck dress, faux fur cardigan and coat before heading to Moorgate station. I was early (for once) and found myself getting there well ahead of schedule to meet my friends, so I decided to go in alone and get started! The venue was so pretty! I was immediately greeted by Jasmine of Soeursdeluxe with a programme and my very own customised keyring from AlohaLolaCards. As I took the Finch’s pub in and all of the amazing stalls it really did feel as if I were walking in a blogger’s wonderland.
Selfie sticks and props adorned tables, goodies and sweets too, but I headed straight to the bar where I could see the most wonderful thing brewing- mulled cider! I was shocked as I got my wallet out to pay that the cider was in fact already paid for, I had only been in the door 5 minutes and I felt so relaxed and happy. I cannot thank Jasmine and Kirsty enough for organising such a great blogging event!
As I waited with my mulled cider in hand for my friends to arrive, I had a flick through the programme so I could see who was attending. I was shocked yet again to discover that I had a little shout out in the programme, as earlier on in the year I had put a favourite jewellery brand of mine in contact with Soeursdeluxe as they were looking to exhibit more in London. Miglio Jewellery were on the guestlist sure enough, and I am really glad I met them and have worked with them since. They are a fabulous company and their innovative styles had all the cameras snap snapping away at their stall.
Another stall I was happy to see there was the Blogosphere magazine. As I am in the publishing industry at work, I have a great respect for printed magazines and this one directed at bloggers specifically is just brilliant. We each went home with a copy of the latest edition of the quarterly mag, and it is so well presented I am itching to get some ideas over to them in the new year to be in with a shot of getting featured! Well worth following these guys on Twitter!
I think my favourite new brand would have to be Aroma Cake Boutique. Founded by Krupali Patel, the Aroma Cake Boutique is a lovely homemade cake company with an Indian twist. I found myself ogling at all the amazing bite size treats laid out for us to try, and all of them were gluten free!
Krupali explained how she and her mother use traditional Indian spices to infuse the cupcakes and the icing. Their masala chai and rose flavour cupcake was like nothing I’d ever tasted before, it was heavenly. Aroma Cake Boutique were kind enough to let me take home a box- they were all gone in less than a day and I didn’t share much either! You can find out more about Aroma Cake Boutique via their website here.
I must also mention another sweet treat which were exhibiting at the Bloggers Xmas event, this time we’re talking cheesecakes!
Sweet Cheesus (great name!) offer 6 different flavours of cheesecake, 2 of which happen to be gluten free! I tried both the white chocolate & summer fruits as well as the salted caramel- both were sublime! I hope to work with them in the new year, so send through your ideas of what you want to see to my Twitter page @saharasplash !
Enough about food, and over to fashion and beauty!
I met a wonderful designer of vintage boxer shorts- House of Dreadful.
These are traditionally men’s boxer shorts, but as I saw them I just knew I had to do a photoshoot with my girls at Petite Model Management. For those of you who don’t know, this year I started up a London-based agency for petite models, and House of Dreadful is definitely on the list of ones to work with for 2016! I’ve already started collecting inspiration over on my Pinterest so check it out- I would love any recommendations too so hit me up with your pins!
And last but certainly not least, my fav lash brand, Lash Perfect were there.
I met their marketing exec Aisha at the beauty blogger awards back in October, and it was great to catch up with her and the luscious lashes. We were spoilt for choice and could take our pick from the lash box- what more does a blogger want?!
I will let you in on a little secret though- this event was the first time I put lashes on myself. Usually I have makeup artists who put them on me, so I was shocked when I tried them out and they worked first time! I went over them with eye liner, here’s a close up of the result:
I will definitely be using my Lash Perfect lashes this season!
So if you are still with me on this 11th paragraph, I want to thank you, the brands above and the fabulous duo that is soeursdeluxe for making this blog post so amazing. I will continue to support my local blogger events and meet new brands as this is what my blog is all about. It is events like this that give me great content so I can keep on blogging and keep on growing- so thank you.
I’m really excited to introduce you to a brand new start up business called snows curiosities. I was thrilled when I saw the designer Shana post online about her homemade bracelets and I want to thank her so much for sending me one to review. I did a photoshoot this weekend to show you all about how I am getting cosy with snows curiosities in my bedroom, and thought that my new sheets provided the perfect cosy Christmas setting for this post (as well as my Xmas jumper!).
Snows curiosities bracelets are a perfect gift to give as you can personalise them to say whatever you want. Of course I got one with my blog name ‘saharasplash’. The bracelets are made in Shana’s home in Kent from silver aluminium. The packaging is super cute and I loved the little bag and charm it came with.
As well as choosing whatever you’d like for the engravement, you can also choose the bracelet width. I loved shooting with the bracelet- the silver went so well with my grey Christmas jumper (from Amara Reya). Here are a few shots showing off my gorgeous new accessory:
Shana will be adding more to her collection very soon and you can get in touch with her on her Facebook page here to place your Xmas orders!
Each bracelet is just £10 which is a fab price for the quality and the personal touch you get with your bracelet. I hope you all will join me in supporting Shana with snows curiosities and get one this Christmas, for yourself or as a present too!
We all want to give the best gifts to our loved ones and somehow still outdo those gifts we bought from last year. I’ve chosen a super easy theme to help you guys out when buying for your group of girls, and that theme is gold! My golden gift guide for xmas 2015 is here to help you nice and early so you’re not stuck for any last minute gifts this year.
Gold is a colour that is always around for the Christmas season so you can’t go wrong with it. Every girl wants to unwrap a present with a bit of sparkle and I’ve chosen 3 clutch bags and 3 necklaces to get those eyes glimmering with joy! My choices range from £10-£80 so whatever your budget, I’ve got you covered with some of my favourite golden gems you can find online right now. Whether you need help buying for a female friend, girlfriend, family member or treating yourself, look no further than my golden guide featured below!
So I picked this cute little clutch up at the Boohoo xmas party this month. This bag caught my eye as I was browsing through their seasonal collection and I didn’t want to put it down. Fortunately Boohoo were kind enough to let me take it home, and I just love it so much. The pom on the front is faux fur and for £14 it’s such a steal.
Another amazing bag which I happen to also have in my possession is this wonderful snake print clutch from Kaleidoscope. I met with Kaleidoscope’s team this month at Flemings Mayfair for a little get together with the brand and bloggers. I fell in love with this bag as well as a blue faux fur coat at the event, and was so thrilled to receive the bag from them in the post last week. This retails at the great price of £29 and would go perfectly with a slip dress from my last post on Motel Rocks!
See the complete partywear range here for even more inspiration!
For someone really special, I’ve chosen this Moschino embossed clutch bag. This is a great statement bag and would be perfect for gifting a fashionista this Christmas. The bag is on sale right now with £15 off, so I’d really recommend getting this one quick before it sells out.
This choker is perfect for an unusual gift as there aren’t many like these in the high st stores. The choker sits gracefully around the neck and would be ready to wear day or night to spice up your ootd. Its detailing is simple yet effective and will bring some Christmas cheer no doubt. I’d recommend getting this for a best friend.
Tatty are a favourite of mine, simply because the materials they use never wear down like you get on other gold and silver accessories. This shooting star necklace is an acrylic hand cut piece that screams Christmas from starpoint to starpoint, and guaranteed you won’t find something like this in stores either this year!
Lastly we come to the devine jewellers that are Swarovski. I think that they are a timeless company you can buy for little angels or your dearest nan and it just works. The Stardust necklace is brought on by the success of the multicoloured wrap bracelet campaign this year featuring Miranda Kerr, and what a way to end the year with this golden gem. I would buy this for my mother without a doubt, but obviously now cannot as she’s probably read this post! But what’s to stop you from getting this for your mum this Christmas???
So there you have it, my golden gift guide whatever your budget. If you’re anything like me then you’ve probably already got a spreadsheet and colour coded it! Relax, we’re officially at the last week of November this week so break out the mince pies and mulled wine already!
Stay warm and think golden thoughts,
Saharasplash
x
PS- Now is a really good time to subscribe to my blog, as the next few weeks I have some amazing posts lined up for you…
First things first, I must say a huge thank you to Gemma from Type the Hype. Type the hype is an online platform which helps bring bloggers and brands together, and I am so happy that I signed up and reached out to them a few weeks ago with the hope to work with Apricot clothing. Apricot are an exquisite brand that have a huge bespoke collection of clothes and accessories on their site. I’m here to post all about why you should be wearing Apricot this autumn and why it’s sometimes good to take a leaf out of your mother’s book!
I pitched the idea to Apricot that I would like to do a post involving my mother as I am always in her wardrobe sneaking things out from under her nose. I felt that Apricot’s style spoke out to the two of us and I wanted to see how we both would style up the same piece- so here’s what happened when they said yes…
I really took a shine to a lot of their seasonal jumpers while browsing through the site deciding what to choose for our photoshoot. In the end I picked out the grey ribbed marl asymmetric hem jumper for my mother and I to wear, and we had already purchased an identical jacket from Neon Rose (featured in my blog post here) just weeks beforehand- perfect timing! I also had to grab some of the bracelets on the site for our autumnal look too, check out Apricot’s jewellery here! The asymmetric jumper is right on trend with its lovely poloneck and mid-length sleeves.
I couldn’t wait for the package to arrive, so I chose next day delivery and waited patiently for the weekend to come when I would head on over to my hometown of Ipswich to open up the parcel and try everything on. Thankfully the weather was kind and so we decided to take a stroll down to Christchurch Park to do the filming and photos. The leaves were a radiant golden brown which offset our white and grey tones sublimely. I had my sister and resident fashion photographer take the lead on this one, she knows what she is doing and I trust that she knows what I am after too. We kept the theme of mothers and daughters throughout the process which I’m really thankful for. I have a strong home unit of females who I can always turn to, and so getting the opportunity to share my blogging with them made it a wonderful day and made for a great blog post!
My mother decided to wear the asymmetric jumper with white skinny jeans and some wedged boots. I decided to wear a grey knee length skirt and white sandals. We wore the same grey jacket and each had on an Apricot bracelet too which you can see worked wonderfully to bring our looks together. I was pleasantly surprised at how easily my mother took to the blogging lifestyle. She did not mind one bit as the passers by stopped to see what we were up to- we had a photographer (the sister) and videographer (the boyfriend) and an assistant (sister’s best friend) all around us as we linked arms and walked back and forth amongst the trees.
We absolutely loved shooting in the jumpers, so a huge thank you Apricot for collaborating with my mother and I on this- you should definitely be wanting to wear Apricot this autumn after checking out the final shots in the video below!
If you like this then please subscribe to my YouTube channel here and you might also like my Lindex Lookbook post here!
I have been really bad at sharing the Motel love since I started blogging- I think that this is down to their sample sales being just at the end of each season. I’m not blaming them one bit for bad timing, I understand that they do the sample sales when they need to, but I always come away with so much stuff and can never post about it because the season changes so fast!
So I thought I would decide to write about my fav picks from the site and write all about the slip dress instead! My Motel summer goodies are now packed away for next year, but that doesn’t mean I can’t share my love for Motel right now…
I have been browsing their site this weekend as usual, and I am really inspired by their unique sense of style and fabulous prints. I do think that they set themselves apart from other popular online stores with their items, and one cut in particular caught my eye…the slip.
If you know me and my wardrobe, you will know that I don’t like to wear the same thing twice- and so this is why I love Motel so much. I know that if I like a certain shape dress, I can go to Motel and they will hook me up in ten ways I had never thought of contemplating. You know that you won’t be caught out wearing the same outfit that the girl on the tube is wearing too (cough H&M) which is really important.
So why the slip? The slip is something that I’ve not been seeing round lately. Its understated elegance is just what your wardrobe needs and paired with Motel’s excellent patterns and colours, the slip dress will have heads turning in your direction at any party. I’ve decided to pick 4 slip dresses which are absolute killers and also a faux fur crop jacket which you can wear with all 4 of them.
This slip immediately caught my eye with its sexy pattern in warm metallic tones. I can imagine wearing this to a few events I have lined up this season and certainly has the wow factor I want when on the hunt for something glitzy and glamorous.
The Gaia dress has a more urban feel to it, less showy but still amazing with its warm colours. I think it doesn’t matter if it’s cold outside, you can still wear a floral slip and be cool for the winter. I’d imagine wearing this to a nice meal out with friends and family, but still keeping my fashion blogger vibes in tact 🙂
Now this is a real showstopper for all you mermaid fans out there. It is an amazing green/blue which I’m guessing would look fab on a dance floor! Get your heels out for this one, and if you don’t have any nights out planned then buy this dress and make some! I would match my eyes to this dress colour for sure.
I had the pleasure of attending the Grace Neutral collection launch party with the Motel Family group, and I absolutely loved her designs. The material is flowy and light- I tried the Kato Kimono on and didn’t want to take it off! Using the same Mandala print, Grace has designed this slip to suit her style and the Motel audience are eating it up. Just last week I saw a blogger at the Boohoo Xmas party wearing this so the pieces are selling well. I would wear this to any blogger event to get the conversation started with other bloggers about Grace Neutral- you know other bloggers will be asking about it!
I wanted to tie all 4 of my choices together with a jacket that you could purchase for any of the slips. This charcoal Freya cropped jacket will look amazing on top of any of the slips, it’s short enough to show off your dress at the bottom if you’re too cold to take it off, and I think this jacket is a real solid winter jacket that would go just as well with jeans and a tee for more causal days.
Ps- right now this jacket is on sale right now better than 50% off! It’s reduced from £55 to £25 so what are you waiting for?!
Pps- enter the code 10OFFTODAY for an additional 10% off! you’re welcome
If you liked this post you will love my Lindex Lookbook so check it out and don’t forget to subscribe via email too here
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