Oh The Joy

When I was in London a few weeks back I found this really cute Lottie pearl collar velvet dress for £65. I had seen some of the Louche collection in Look Magazine and really liked their dresses. They are stocked exclusively at JOY and as a bonus they are also Limited Edition so it is unlikely you will see someone else in the same dress. We did used to have this store in Birmingham but it closed down last year. I went to their store just off Oxford Street and I have to say their staff are AMAZING! They couldn't do enough to help me find the right dress and then gave me a £5 off voucher. Shop assistants who actually want to help you shop are so rare...and they shouldn't be. I will definitely be going back.

Tick Tick Tick - Happy Birthday To Me

I realised I forgot to share with you the lovely watch I got for my Birthday earlier this month...

My Boyfriend got me this lovely Michael Kors Gold Chronograph Bracelet Watch

I went to House of Fraser and tried it on first and the lovely lady at the counter told me that it is now the best selling ladies watch in the world at the moment. I didn't let that put me off. I really like large style of it. What do you think?

Lanvin for H&M- The Big Day!

Like most of you it felt like we had been waiting forever for the Lanvin collection to land in H&M. As I'm sure many of you did, I set my alarm early yesterday and was ready at 7am for things to go live. I tried and tried but the website kept crashing. I did expect this due to the fact that the UK H&M online shop hasn't been up that long and this is the 1st time a designer collection has been available for UK shoppers via the website. There is surely no way to test for that amount of traffic?

I did eventually get the pink one shoulder dress that I have been after ever since I saw it on the fabulous Anna Dello Russo last week, into my bag but couldn't check out.... talk about teasing me! Never one to give up I headed into Birmingham. When I got to the Bull Ring store at 9.15am there was non of the chaos I had expected. Ladies were queuing up to see the collection in an orderly fashion monitored by the staff although they were grabbing arms full of clothes. I couldn't get near the dresses but did get a wristband for a 12.25 timeslot(!)

Off I went to work and arrived back in store just after Midday. It's a good job I got in early as I arrived I managed to get two dresses, one for me and one for my sister. Not the ones we wanted but lovely non the less and if I had arrived a minute later there would have been nothing left. Should it really be this hard though to buy such a hugely anticipated collection?

How did you get on?

Here are our dresses. I can't wait to wear mine then I will post some photo's.

My Lanvin Dress               My Sister's Lanvin Dress

Free Fiver!

Do you fancy a free fiver? To spend at Debenhams? Thanks to a new blogger I started following on Twitter Bargainista Fashionista I found out about this voucher
It gives you £5 off anything in store with no strings attached. Valid until 12th November so get yours now. I totally recommend Barganista Fashionista's blog. In the same post as she told us about the voucher she also spills the beans on how to get free Clinique mascara. Read all about it here. My kind of blogger!

I spent mine on a bottle of Chanel Nail Polish. Well it's rude not to when you get £5 off! I went in to get one of the Khaki collection either Khaki Brun, Khaki Rose or Khaki Vert but found that they only stock this in Selfridges on Oxford Street. So instead I chose Rouge Noir a dark plummy shade which should be perfect for Autumn Winter. I love that it's dark but not black.

IKEA Style?

Have you seen the new IKEA advert yet? I saw the new IKEA Kitchen Party advert a couple of weeks ago and while singing along to the fabulous 80's soundtrack Jona Lewie's 'You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties,' I managed to track down the great little white dress worn by Romanian Model Lavinia Sima. Both the black and white dresses are by AQUA. Better still the white ANNA dress is in the sale.



A bargain at just £45! I hadn't come across AQUA before but have now seen they are stocked at ASOS and in Topshop on Oxford Street. It reminds me a little of the Kate Moss one shoulder dress from the 2007 collection. Now...time for dancing around the kitchen?

Alex Curran Steals Chloe Sevigny's Style For The MOBO'S 2010

I have just seen in the press how amazing Alex Curran looked at last night's MOBO Awards. The dress looks great and was my favourite of the night so I started hunting around to find out where the dress was from and made a bit of a discovery....


The dress is Lanvin and Alex had compleatly ripped off the same outfit worn by Chloe Sevigny to the Emmy's right down to her Louboutin “Madame Butterfly” booties. It's a bit of a shame Alex didn't add her own twist. I knew I had seen this dress somewhere before! Buy who wore it better?

Good Enough To Eat

I don't know what is wrong with me at the moment. I'm OBSESSED with Caramel (or Camel!). It's this season's hottest colour by far now all over The High Street and is good enough to eat. My best Caramel buys have included a lovely warm Betty Jackson at Debenhams Swing Duffel Coat and this Topshop silk shirt. Is it possible that a colour can be considered cosy? Or even tasty? If it is then caramel is the tastiest, cosiest colour around. It seems to work for everyone and dare I say make us all look more sophisticated? Scrumptious!

My YSL Glasses Have Arrived

Finally my lovely YSL glasses have arrived! I thought I would show them to you.

I used to have the glasses FEAR having worn glasses when I was a child and been forced through all kinds of horrendous styles (including ones that hook around your ears ouch!) This caused me to think that all glasses are ugly.

Over time, not wearing them though my eyes aren't as good as they used to be and staring at a computer all day hasn't helped. So I bought myself some new frames. Having had my eyes tested I was seriously disappointed by the limited choice of frames. Why do they fill all the same with what is essentially the same pair of glasses? You can see in the earlier post my top picks here.

It seems I'm not the only one who has been looking for glasses lately as I see Susie Bubble from Style Bubble has also been on the hunt here.

After looking around A LOT I settled with the YSL 2253 in Dark Havana. What do you think? Not a great photo but I'm working on taking better photos.

The Best Summer Trousers

Today I have found my perfect Summer trousers... and what's more they are only £14.99! These are available in black, white, grey, beige, khaki and brown and are in shops now.

The military look had been going strong on the high street this season and now H&M have released the perfect military trousers. Even Mrs B was looking unusually casual in a fantastic in a pair. River Island also has a great pair that are slightly more expensive but still a bargain at £29.99.

I can't wait to snap up a pair. *Skips to H&M to wrestle someone for them*

The Outnet Outburst!

What do you do when your PR stunt or marketing campaign badly backfires? I am of course talking about the 1st Birthday campaign for NET-A-PORTER.COM's sister website theOutnet.com. This site boasts a "Chic discount shopping experience."

'Chic' was definitely not how I would describe Friday's £1 Birthday sale. This was an invite only meant to be exclusive affair which inevitably was about data capture and expanding mailing lists. Having registered two weeks ago after reading about the event on twitter, I was sent an email to tell me I was "on the list!" How very important I felt. Little old me being invited along to this special event. The campaign was going well so far. I even read up on how to shop smart and increase my chances of being able to snap myself up a lovely designer bargain for just £1. I registered all my address details before hand and prepared as they could notify me at any time on Friday when the sale was live.

Sure enough, at around 7.10am as i was clambering around trying to get dressed for work I got an email and jumped straight online. After about 10 minutes of the website crashing I finally got through me email invite onto the site. But, what now. Having seen the email it did say "Everything in the sale £1!" But where was the sale? No sign,

This was where I started to get frustrated. I clicked around trying to find £1 items. Nothing. The site continued to crash. Now, it may just be me but I would think that if you were having an invite-only sale you could easily anticipate the maximum number of people who could be on your site at one time? The site continued to crash.

Thinking that I must have been mistaken and that something MUST be £1 I tried to put something in my basket and see if the price changed when I went to pay. This alone took an hour. I then phoned the helpline. Only to be told that nobody would be answering the phone today but not to forget that only items marked as £1 were in fact £1. I still hadn't seen a single one of these amazing £1 items. I continued on this until 10am. The time I had allowed before I decided to give up. Then I went on Twitter only to be told the sale had ended. It seems I wasn't the only person to have problems in my quest for the perfect discount designer item.

One angry tweeter said "it was like being invited to a party and then getting a slap in the face when you arrived!"

While others were saying that they would never shop with theOutnet again. This surely wasn't the VIP shopping experience Outnet had hoped for?

Outnet director Stephanie Phair sent out this message (taken from Racked.com)

Hello everyone, I am Stephanie, Director of theOutnet. I wanted to personally say that we have been listening to all your comments. First and most importantly, I want to say sorry for the frustrating experience that many of you had. You have shown incredible interest in our site today and we do not take that lightly. Clearly, while we were prepared for the volume of traffic the sale would deliver, in some markets, the UK mainly, we were overwhelmed by the speed at which you came to the site this morning. This remarkable volume—up to 9 orders a second—led the site to crash for many of you, and I want to say that we are very sorry to all those who didn’t get to buy anything at the sale, but delighted for the thousands of lucky ones amongst you that did walk away with a £1/$1 bargain from theOutnet. We want to thank all of you for being part of our first year celebrations. With each event we are working hard to fix issues that arise, and want to say that we fully intend to offer you further bargain shopping opportunities in the future. Thank you again, Stephanie.

I guess it always was too good to be true and although it hasn't put me off shopping at The Outnet for good, I will think twice before getting involved in one of these events again.

Fashion Targets Breast Cancer

This week this year's Fashion Targets Breast Cancer campaign which raises money for UK charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer. This was launched with the gorgous photos being released shot by Mario Testino of Kylie Minogue, Sienna Miller and Claudia Schiffer wrapped in black and white target sheets.

Then over the weekend I got a Topshop email and noticed that their is a fantastic collection that is being sold to help raise money for the campaign which hopes to raise over £1 million.

You can see the full collection here.

Some of my favourites include The "Love to Love" Vest from Topshop and the Olivia Rubin dress from My Wardrobe 30% of purchases go towards the campaign so you get to spend a feel great!

Cancer Surviver Kylie

Photo courtesy of Breakthrough

Breast Cancer

H&M Garden Collection

I walk past the H&M on Corporation Street in Birmingham every day and this week I got very excited when I saw the new Garden Collection being put into the window. It is perfect for this Spring/Summer with lots of my favourite floral dresses. I'm a big fan of the red prom dress. Made with recycled and organic materials you get to feel 'Green' about buying this collection too!

I get the feeling this collection won't be around for long though. I just wish H&M would catch on and set up an online shop in the UK. The already have one in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Holland, Norway and Sweden. I just get annoyed as the shop assistants never seem to know where an item is or when it is coming in to store.

A Spring In My Step

I find it really really hard to get beautiful, fashionable shoes that are comfortable and fit well because of my very odd size feet. Selina from Flying Saucer did a post today about the beautiful platform shoes from Miu Miu's Spring/Summer 2010and I felt a strange pang as I know there is no way I could walk in them.

Instead I will be spending my spring in some brogues! These are perfect for me and although they have been around for a while now they seem to be everywhere right now. I cant wait to get my hands on this pair from Office which are a mixture between a brogue and a Jazz shoe. I think they would also look good with some lovely ankle socks!

Suddenly I See

I have been having problems this week trying to pick out my new glasses frames. Geek frames have been seen all over recently but it seems every opticians only stock the same frames. Strugeling for inspiration I have been looking around online instead. My top picks for on trend frames include Prism Round Frame Glasses, YSL 6224 and Ray-ban 5121. Get your eyes tested in a shop then buy online for bargin frames. Specs4less will even do a refund or exchange perscription frames even if you don't like the colour.

I'm feeling Greige

Ok so top of my lust list this week is Chanel Varnish Le Vernis in Particuliere. This is a grey/beige shade that has been nicknamed 'Greige.' This is the shade that has been seen on Lilly Alan in the latest add campaign and is set for be the hottest shade for Spring 2010. The sad news is it's already sold out in store and is going on Ebay for around £40. I have to have it but can I justify spending so much on a bottle of nail varnish?

Welcome to An Inch of Style

Hello!
Welcome to An Inch of Style. I have been meaning to put this blog together for ages. Inspired by some of those in my blog list I have finally done it. It will be a place for all my style finds and the things I am lusting after. I'm very much a budget fashionista but I believe you don't have to have a massive budget to be fashionable...just an inch of style should do it. If you like anything you find here then please leave me a comment.

Claire xxx