As I'm sure many of you will know, last weekend was the Vogue Festival in association with Harrods Live at the Southbank Centre in London. I was lucky enough to acquire a VIP ticket and spent the entire weekend having the most amazing time at the festival, I can't express how grateful I am to have been given that opportunity.
At the festival there were probably about ten talks going on over the whole weekend with some amazing panelists giving their opinions and sharing their stories on different areas within the industry. As well as this there were different hair and make-up teams camped out in the foyer ready to transform visitors into cover-ready stars! Downstairs Harrods held a Street Style catwalk competition inviting guests to walk down a white catwalk and enter a competition looking for the next street style icon. I pretty much did everything you could whilst at the festival and I couldn't do all that and not share it with all of you! So here is what I got up to at the festival, enjoy!
Saturday
Now Saturday morning I turned up bright and early to the Southbank centre, so early in fact it hadn't even opened yet!
Once it opened I went to collect my ticket for the Want To Work In Fashion Talk which took place on the Sunday and the lovely ladies at the Harrods desk gave me a spare ticket to the Power of Two talk as well! Seen as I was one of the first to arrive at the festival they also offered to enter me into Harrods Street Style competition for that day even though I was supposed to do it on Sunday. So I was quickly thrown into a Bobbi Brown make-up chair where my attempt at making up my face was rescued and then it was out on to the catwalk! The team backstage had told us all (there was about fifteen of us in this set) to walk down the catwalk at a steady pace and then pause at the end for three seconds and pose so the photographer could take a picture. Now because I possess absolutely no grace or elegance whatsoever and didn't have the confidence to pull off a striking pose so I stood before the photographer like a lemon before heading backstage again. Then it was time for a group promenade which was met with a lovely round of applause from the audience. I hung around after my turn on the catwalk for the next set of contestants and took some pictures of my favourites.
After this I had a wander around the festival to entertain myself until The Power Of Two talk. I explored the downstairs room where Harrods had based themselves, visited the Vogue Shop where I bought Alexandra Shulman's book 'Can We Still Be Friends', sat in the Vogue Cinema and watched backstage videos of some of their photo-shoots from the last year whilst nibbling on a free bag of popcorn before finally heading to the Queen Elizabeth Hall for the talk.
The panelists for the Power Of Two talk were none other than Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler and Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier who are now the head designers at Marc by Marc Jacobs. The talk was really interesting to witness first hand, they discussed how they share the designing and the influences of both of their backgrounds and passions to create a combined collection. It was really inspiring and it was obvious how in synch each pair is and how they bring out the best in and compliment each others work. I'm so thankful to have been able to go to that talk.
Also literally minutes before heading into the hall I walked past Susie Bubble and realising who it was went into fangirl mode and went up to talk to her. I'd like to say I didn't make a complete fool of myself but who am I kidding? I was stupidly starstruck and in awe so I came out with "Susie you're amazing I'm a huge fan of your blog its fab! I don't know what else to say, just you're amazing". To be honest she looked a bit scared but thanked me all the same, Susie if you ever read this I am so sorry for my complete lack of cool that day.
After the talk me and two of the friends on my course Terri and Georgina left the festival and went for an explore around London. We crossed the river over to the Embankment then walked up through Covent Garden and Leicester Square to get to Soho where we stopped at the most adorable and delightful cafe called Muriel's Kitchen for a quick cake. If you ever find yourself in Soho with a case of the munchies, go! It's on Old Compton Street and I think there are a few more around London too so you have no excuse not to pay it a visit.
Sunday
This was also a very exciting day. When I got to the Southbank Centre (which again was rather early) I headed to the make-up and nail stations as the queues were a lot shorter than they were the previous day and I had about six hours to kill before my next talk. I was given a lovely manicure by the OPI team and given the 'Burberry smokey eye' by the loveliest lady at the Burberry booth. After my make-up had been done I went into a photo booth where they printed me a picture of my new look. I was also tempted to have my hair done but there is very little that can be done with my hair at the best of times and thought it best to leave my crazy curls alone.
I then went back downstairs to watch another set entrants to Harrods Street Style Competition when Karlie Kloss, Edie Campbell, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Jordan Dunn where all standing on the catwalk for a photograph! Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures as I was stood behind them but here are my attempts.
After this fashion film pioneer Nick Knight was doing a signing for his new book upstairs in the Session Space so I went up to see if I could meet him. I had every intention of buying his book until I got to the Vogue Shop and it cost £50! So instead I cheekily asked him to sign my notebook which he generously did. I asked him for some tips on fashion film to help with my uni module and he said "Get close up to the clothes" which he admitted was rather vague and not very helpful but I was happy enough just to meet him!
As I still had some time to kill before Want To Work In Fashion I asked the Harrods ladies if they had any spare tickets and they generously gave me a ticket for the Good Taste Bad Taste talk with Grayson Perry, Lily Allen and Jasper Conran! Now this talk was ridiculously hilarious, Grayson looked amazing and was such a character on stage and gave the whole room an exciting atmosphere. Lily and Jasper joined in with the jokes and the whole thing was extremely entertaining. Grayson also very kindly blessed us all with a new favourite word "yawn-o-rama".
An hour later it was finally time for my most exciting and inspirational talk of the whole weekend, the Want To Work In Fashion talk with panelists Lisa Armstrong, Sarah Burton, Daniel Marks, Louise Wilson and Alexandra Shulman. This was quite an experience, it was thrilling to have five of the industry's most successful leaders in one room and hear them giving advice on how to break into each of their industries was amazing and made me so thankful of the opportunity I had been given. All gave useful tips and words of wisdom for impressing any prospective employer and breaking into fashion. My favourite quote from this talk was definitely from Alexandra Shulman who admitted that when she started working at Vogue "I didn't even know that collections were shown twice a year!".
After this talk I also met Daniel Marks, director of The Communication Store, and as I was still working on my PR module at this point I asked for tips on writing a good press release to which he said "Keep it short".
This was the last thing I attended at the festival before heading back to Kensington where I was staying so here are a few more pictures from my weekend.
I also spotted myself in one of the photographs from the weekend on the Vogue website! Click on this link if you want to see it:
http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/celebrity-photos/2014/03/29/the-vogue-festival-2014/gallery/1155934
Also if you'd like to see a few more pictures from my weekend check out my Instagram:
http://instagram.com/hollyanniles
And as I finish up this ridiculously long post here are some pictures of my souvenirs from the weekend. I hope you enjoyed reading about this adventure and hopefully now I've broken up from uni for Easter my posts will be slightly more frequent. Have a lovely week and I shall see you all soon! Love Holly x
P.S. How hilarious is this last picture?! And yes that is a Chanel jacket I am wearing, eek!
