There is potential for Birmingham Fashion Week to be great, although sadly it was very disappointing. It was set in the Council House which was a beautiful building, while Fashion Week was in the banqueting suite which is an extravagant and lovely room. When we went through there was a room with a bar and a variety of stalls. It was really fun to look round this especially a vintage stall called "What Alice found" which I really loved (probably due to my obsession with Alice in Wonderland.) There were also really interesting make up/hair tutorials, as well as a colour test by the Francesco Group to find out whether warm or cool colour tones work well with your skin colour. I found this fascinating and found out that warm colour tones will compliment me more if I wear them. As fun as it was going round this stalls, there were so few of them that it didn't take long to look round. I think it would have been a lot better to of had some more stalls to make it more interesting and to give people more to look at.




Next it was time for the main event, the fashion show. Although when it came to taking our seats it almost felt as if I was a part of the heard going off to be milked or something. It was ridiculous. We were squeezed into the crowd pushing forward to try and get out seats. While I also found out after that some people even managed to sneak onto the front row although they hadn't paid for this privilege. This just shows the un-organisation of this event. Although I have found out since that their production company bailed on them last minute which answers some questions, but you would think an event of this status would be able to not have played the wrong music.




The first collection was by Kayowo of which the designer is a human rights activist and the collection was inspired by world issues. I loved some of the detailing on the clothes such as the lovely floral accents. Although a few technical issues, and badly fitting clothing didn't give the best impression.

After this there was a smokey eye demonstration by MLA. This was done awfully, they had clearly not practised it all. One woman was meant to be describing what the other was doing although all that kept happening was her repeating what the other said. As well as the lack of camera you couldn't even see the demonstration properly. Also at the event they were trying to sell their own make-up yet in the tutorial used other products such as Mac, seems slightly odd to me.


The next collection was by Khloe Nova's which she described as 'sophisticated glam' although in fact in reminded me much more of glamour models strutting the runway. The clothing was tacky and sexualised in a vulgar way, with a few bum cheeks slipping out. Not what I would cool sophisticated at all.


The networking event was a brilliant part of the evening, lots of people came and talked to me asking about blogs. I even met an interesting stylist that mainly works with graduate students, it was fascinating talking to her. While the brands themselves were also really interesting to talk to as they told us a lot about what they do. This part of the evening had to be my favourite as it was great getting round talking to everyone.




The second half of the evening really got going a bit more, I enjoyed this half a lot. The House of Borgezie were by far my favourite collection as I felt the colours were vibrant and the colours were so different it was very intriguing. While the walking was a lot more consistent so it reflected a lot more practise.

Overall I had a lot of fun at Birmingham Fashion Week and would love to go to an event like this again. Let me know your thoughts on how you found it!