Tablet – Lenovo Yoga. Envelope pouch – Smythson. Heels – Bally. Headphones – Bower Wilkins.

London Fashion Week SS15: A visual diary

Hyundai i20

Hunter SS15

Charlie May SS15 eyewear

Mary Katrantzou final walk

Max Factor Skin Illuminator Foundation & Colour Corrector Stick

Topshop Unique SS15

Topshop Unique SS15

Food on instagram because proper photos on DSLR? Ain’t nobody got time fo that.

Wearing: Top – COS. Trousers – Zara. Bag – Marni. Shoes – Tibi. Watch – Larsson & Jennings. Rings – Monica Vinader. Cross-Ring – Elizabeth & James (via REVOLVE)

What do they say – Give a woman a house, she’ll make a home? Well, give a woman a Hyundai i20 over Fashion Week, and she’ll make a Death Star on four wheels and one 22-year old driver very, very uncomfortable. This, like many things in life – including adding soy sauce to everything – I blame my mother. Growing up, mornings were a battle of which sibling can out-stupid the other one, starting with putting shoes on before trousers, smearing toothpaste all over our faces and pretending to shave… you get the gist. This led to my poor mother having to shovel us into the car every morning along with 2 x cereal bowls, school outfits, homework, toothbrushes… (at one point I believe there was a pillow fort in the car), and she’d drive with one hand while the other ‘conditioned the air’. Fast forward to SS15 LFW, I inhale a plastic container of scrambled eggs in the car while deciding on an outfit, and with each day a new pile of clothing spilling out the passenger door. At the end of Day One I attend a makeup session at the Apartment with Max Factor discovering the new Skin Luminizer Foundation, and from that point on I use the tinted passenger window to accomplish the ‘dewy look’ in the ensuing mornings, just how Caroline Barnes instructed. My 22-year old driver awkwardly avoids using the rear-view mirror (apparently a touch worse than drink-driving) during my changing room sessions, but we somehow manage to make a split-second eye-contact just when my head is halfway through a sweater. Thankfully this Death Star is all about efficiency (close that hatch…) as we slice through morning traffic, and I arrive at the first show of the day with a Aquafresh breath and lotion behind my ears.

Stay tuned for some of my favourite collections so far!

Huge thanks to Hyundai UK for, gee wow, a car with my logo on it (!), and allowing ‘5 more minutes, mum…’ to happen. Please forgive me for any coco puffs found between the seats. 

London Fashion Week AW14

Eudon Choi AW14

Marios Schwab AW14

Whistles AW14

Burberry AW14

Harry Styles in the house, yo

Outfit 1 (Camel coat): Coat – Club Monaco, Muff – Topshop. Bag – Mansur Gavriel (available for pre-order!). Jeans – James Jeans. Shoes – Church’s. Lipstick – Estee Lauder.

Outfit 2 (Houndstooth coat):  Coat – Selected Femme (via ASOS). Trousers – Zara (similar here). Shoes – ASOS. Muff – Topshop. Bag – Kurt Geiger Britton bowler

Well that just whizzed by, didn’t it. Considering how every season in the past I hobbled home like a war hero, full of stories to tell the grandchildren, dangling off crutches constructed of empty Vitamin Water bottles, this season LFW just felt MUCH less eventful. In fact, it felt like I’d gone to war, hid in the bushes and waited till it was over. I suppose technically this was true, as Hyundai had been so generous to sponsor a car and I spent 70% of the time in there with the awesome driver called Arthur, who’d instantly appear with the Santa Fe from around the corner when I shone a thumbs-up emoji signal into the dark clouds. Thumbs up for ‘I’m done here, let’s get stuck in traffic and talk about motorbikes‘. Coincidentally, I got more work done in that car than a week’s worth of working from home as well, which only confirms that I only work efficiently with impending deadlines (e.g GPS announcing we’re approaching destination). I also started a new relationship with a new phone at the beginning of the week – the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (via Carphone Warehouse) – and spent the five days in honeymoon bliss, poring over improved functionalities (I’m upgrading from the Note 2) and panicked when it took two minutes, not six, to put up an Instagram photo. What does one do with extra four minutes in life?

It was a good season, and for the first time ever I felt like I saw the few shows I really wanted to see (except Mary Katrantzou, that ticket will be my Oscar). Do look out for more updates in the next few weeks. Plus, I didn’t shorten my lifespan by about twenty years by having to haul three camera lenses and a laptop the whole week. I may have grandchildren, after all!

Many thanks to Hyundai UK and Carphone Warehouse again for the extra twenty years, plus four minutes. Also, a cheeky shout-out  to Lulu Guinness and Vita Coco for the survival kits that made the car known as the ‘party car’ by my peers.