Cherry Healey Style

Cherry Healey: www.cherryhealey.com

Over the past few weeks I have been really been enjoying watching Cherry Healey in Cherry's Body Dilemma's and Cherry's Cash Dilemma's on BBC 3. Cherry is excellent and I really like the really natural way she takes on all kinds of challenges as we follow her on her adventures to meet all kinds of interesting people.

There's one thing that seems to be almost as popular as her programme - her style! It's not hard to see why. If you head over to her blog here you can see some of her outfit photos where she works out her Fashion Maths which = lots of great outfits. My favourite is this one. A great leather jacket that lost of readers on Cherry's Blog seem to love. Hopefully she will reveal where it is from. It's such a shame the Zara maxi skirt isn't avaliable anymore but I am concidering making my own. It should be quite easy to do if I can track down some great fabric.

It's not just Cherry's clothes that we love. She wears her hair in some lovely up-do's including an Erdem style head plat or "Princess Leia Hair" as she calls it, which you can learn to do here. I noticed during the programmes that she wears a lovely shade of red lipstick that I just hadn't managed to find in the shops so I got in touch with her to find out exactly which one she wore. Cherry said

"Hi Claire,
I searched for such a long time before I found a red that suited my colourings - Chanel no.14 seems to do the trick - the 'classic' is the no.64 but I think it's just slightly too dark. I also mix the lipstick with Superdrug's Barry M brand lipliner in red - it's so good you could pretty much get away with wearing that alone - and it lasts forever. And it's about £3. Yes please. Cxxx"

So there you have it! I will post again after I have given the shades she suggests a try. There's nothing like a bit of red lipstick to brighten up my outfits on these dark Autumn days.

I ♥ Mary Portas

I know I might be a little behind the times here but I have only just had chance to watch Mary Portas : Secret Shopper on Channel 4. I am hooked!

Having never seen Mary Queen Of Shops I wasn't quite sure about her but the idea of the show is genius! The show is all about her trying to improve customer service for us, the shoppers. I watched the 1st episode about High Street chain Pilot and was jumping up and down screaming at the tv. For ages I have been totally infuriated by the lack of knowledge and service you get in some shops. Even when you take a photo from a magazine or blog in showing exactly what your looking for, the shop assistant just momentarily stop their conversation and gesture "if it's here, it's over there" and "if it's not out, we haven't got it" It's so annoying and frustrating. Mary doesn't blame the staff though but the management.

Then I remembered this Liz Jones Article from The Daily Mail I read a couple of weeks ago. It's a little bit shocking how little the shop assistants in this article seem to know about clothes and how uninspiring they are.

It shouldn't be so unexpected when shops actually deliver on service. I have had great experiences recently thanks to first class service in Whistles and Joy. It really does make me want to shop there more often when the staff are helpful, hardworking and friendly. Is it really so hard? Where on the High Street do you get the best service?

Thanks to Mary, next time I'm not looked after I am going to complain to the management and ask for better or not spend.