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.
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!
Petite model update!
I am absolutely thrilled with the response I have had over the past few months about my new modelling company: Petite Model Management
I have just completed the final test shoot and I am so happy with the results so far! I have a grand total of 19 girls ready to be signed in September.
I will be working with the models to build up their portfolios if need be and will be organising various shoot days so that we can all get together and have some fun in different locations around London.
A few ideas put forward already are:
Bath and flowers shoot
Calvin Klein wet hair shoot
Asian bridal style shoot
Alien makeup (inspired by the new Star Wars campaign for Max Factor)
I’d love to show you a few of the models on here, but for more please see the Twitter page here and the Facebook page here
If you would be interested in joining the petite model management team as a model, please submit a clear headshot with no makeup plus any work from your portfolio to [email protected]
To be eligible you must be no taller than 5″7 and must be able to travel to London if you are invited for a test shoot. Size and age does not matter
So yesterday evening I had the pleasure of working with Annie and Aleks as we did a last minute Photoshoot at my flat. I was wearing 2 pieces by a latex designer and we had such a great time!
My look was dark pink eyes and we recreated doll like poses. This was my first time wearing latex for a shoot, and although I struggled to get into it, it looked fab on!
We used my living room and bedroom and did some elegant shots with light boxes. I wore my cherry Vivienne Westwoods for the final touch and left my hair down and loose. I don’t really wear pink clothes or makeup so it was a nice change as I wouldn’t have chosen to wear something like this normally!
I’ll be posting the finished photos up on my model page here and on my insta here over the next few days, so watch out!!!
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