New discoveries…

… and a couple of old ‘friends’ of course.

This is my round-up from last week’s Spirit of Christmas Fair at Olympia, where some 750 independent boutiques, all hand-picked by House & Garden, gathered under the colossal pink & silver adorned roof of Kensington Olympia.

I’d never been to any kind of fair at Olympia before – a gig or two back in the day, yes, but not a fair and nothing could have quite prepared me for the enormity of it.

As well as the hundreds of stands on ground level, there were more stands, a cafe, restaurant, food stalls and the like all around the permitter on the first floor.

Luckily for me, my bestie from Uni was with me for the day, and somewhat more focussed than I… she quickly devised a logical route for us to snake round and back, through aisle after aisle of fabulous stalls so that we didn’t miss a thing.

I will say now though, there were so, so, so many boutiques, that it was inevitable that we couldn’t possibly stop and check-out ever single stall.

There were just too many – a real feast for the eyes!  So this round-up, really is just a few of my favs.

Now, whether true or not, it certainly appeared to me that over half of the stalls were cashmere or jewellery stalls, and we did stop off at every single one of them!

Before arriving, I had every intention of returning home with 2 things: a cashmere sweater from Wyse London and a pair of Glitter Copeland trainers from Air & Grace, both of whom I follow on Instagram and neither of whose products I had ever seen in the flesh.

So, starting with Cashmere, we visited the Wyse London stall early on in the day and it was their Striped Rainbow Bomber which I had my eye on:

This cardi isn’t yet available on the Wyse website, so to buy it at the fair would have been a pretty cool ‘exclusive’. I can’t remember the exact price either, confusion has set in because most of their items were discounted by £20 or so at the fair… and now I’m writing this, and looking at the photo, I can’t remember what stopped me from buying it?!

I think perhaps, I got distracted by this Maddy Lurex Sweatshirt:

Rather unfortunate for both me, and for Wyse, because it was so early in the day, I felt I needed to check out some of the other cashmere offerings before committing to a purchase, and so I didn’t buy anything from this stop.

I underestimated how much there would be to see, how much walking around there would be and so we never made it back to the stall.  Seems daft now I write it, but that’s just how it was!

It was towards the end of the day, on the upper level, after a late lunch in the cafe at around 4pm, that I did return to a cashmere stall – Little Leggies – a fashion label set up by two friends: fashion for children aged 0-11 with a small ladies collection as well, ‘enabling Mum and mini twinning’.

We had initially walked passed the stall without stopping as we’d presumed it was children – girlswear.  However, on passing them a second time, we’d stopped to look at the sweaters because, I figured if they were girlswear, they still looked big enough for me!

After a little chat with the girls at the stall, they clarified that they had a small selection of ladies cashmere as well.  And so, whilst in the cafe, munching my lunch, I couldn’t stop thinking about the pop of neon on their sweaters:

 

 

All their ladies sweaters are 100% cashmere and having done the rounds at most of the cashmere stalls at the fair, the pricing of £145 was really very reasonable too.

So, I did come away with a cashmere sweater – just not the one I had imagined.  I was no doubt one of the most painful customers of the day, because I tried on pretty much every colour in every size!  I wanted a slouchier fit, and the size XS in the sweaters above was a perfect fit, but not slouchy enough.

However, this grey-fluoro marl sweater, because of the flour-flecked yarn, came up slightly roomier and fit the bill perfectly:

I’m totally in love with this sweater: its soft, comfy, cozy and the fluorescent ribbed hem & cuffs remind me of being 11 and begging my mum to buy me some fluorescent mis-matched fingerless mitts off the market which she finally agreed to (though thankfully, she didn’t let me buy the mis-matched fluoro socks!).

On returning home, I looked up Little Leggies on Instagram and was delighted to see none other than Fearne Cotton sporting one of their sweaters:

Well now. If it’s good enough for hipster-trendy mum Fearne, it’s certainly good enough for me!  That I’m a good decade or so older than her is irrelevant: after all, anything goes in fashion nowadays, right?

I must thank both Louise and Gussy for their helpfulness and patience whilst I procrastinated over colours and sizes… it was the end of a very long day and my brain had stopped working!

Little Leggies is definitely a happy new discovery for me and given how spot on the sizing was for me, I would highly recommend their sweaters for Petites and everyone else alike.

Next up: Trainers… Sneakers in fact.

Glitter sneakers no less.

Yup, by now, if you follow my blog, you’ll know all about my magpie-tendencies… again, through Instagram, I have been following Air & Grace, London for a while now and was more than slightly obsessed by their White Leather/navy glitter Copeland Trainers:

 

We found our way to the Air & Grace stall, where I got to meet the lovely Claire Burrows, founder of the brand, with an ethos all about comfortable footwear.  Claire recently won the much coveted Footwear & Friends 2016 award for her innovative and patented ‘tender loving care footbed’ hidden inside all of her footwear range (boots and trainers alike), to give a ‘sneaker feel’.

I tried on a pair of navy multi-glittered copeland sneakers, and having wanted them for so, so long now, I was utterly disappointed to find the size 3/36 came up big on me.

However, I wanted to include Air & Grace here because let’s face it,  most people have normal sized feet and t’s just me that has stupidly narrow ones (ugh!)

Also, I can report back, that from merely trying these sneakers on, they are indeed incredibly comfortable!  The ‘TLC footbed’ really is a clever shoe insole.

Alas, just not for me though.

With a world of sneakers out there, and never one to get down about sizing for too long, I happened upon Vevie’s stand.

Again, not a store I’ve come across before, but they sell designer swimwear and activewear.  However, it wasn’t the swimwear or gym clothing which drew me in… I spotted their display of Brooks Running shoes:

I’d posted about Brooks trainers on my instagram a while back, on my ‘wanted list’ but in all honesty, apart from once seeing a pair on someone’s feet, I’d never really come across the trainers in the flesh, in a store…

They come in a great many vibrant colours:

Priced at £95 a pair, which when compared to many other trainer brands out there, is much of a muchness.

As ever, it’s the bling which caught my magpie-eye: the Black/quartz colour-way which unfortunately happened to be sold out in my size; a lady was trying on the final pair in this colour and they looked stunning on her.

Caroline from the Vevie store was super helpful, took my details and said she’d drop me a line this week to see if she couldn’t get me a pair directly from the manufacturer in the US.

And true to her word, she has both emailed me and followed this up with a phone call this morning to assure me that if I place the order, she is happy to accept returns because the shoe is so popular, she will be able to sell on if there is a sizing issue.

These running shoes tend to come up a little small you see, so I have a little sizing dilemma on my hands.  Watch this space… you never know!

And finally – Jewellery.

There were A LOT of jewellery stands, to suit all price ranges and whilst I say I stopped at all of them… I did’t stop at the crazy-expensive looking ones!

Alexis Dove fine jewellery caught my eye because of their rather gorgeous little dinosaur charms:

These range from £100 – £190 depending on whether you go for silver, yellow vermeil or rose vermeil finish and whether you go for a chain or a ribbon.

Whether it’s because I’m a mother of two dino mad boys, or just that, my inner child also happens to think dinosaurs are cool & amazing, I absolutely adore these.

Perhaps a christmas present?!

They have a great many more cute and beautiful charms and jewellery available on their website – go take a peek.

And finally, an old favourite whom I’ve definitely mentioned before: Cabbage White England: Kelly ran a draw on both her Instagram feed and  Cabbage White Mailing list for 10 pairs of tickets for the Spirit of Christmas Fair.

I was lucky enough to be a recipient of a pair of these tickets which is why I got the chance to visit the fair, so of course I had to find the Cabbage White stand and say thank you to Kelly for the tickets.

The stand had #allthepretty – everything was twinkling and winking at me, and I had intended to treat myself to a Star Bar necklace from the Superstars collection:

But in the end, I went for a mix of metals: a gold chain with two stars, one silver and one rose gold:

Here I am today, wearing my chain:

I was able to buy this with a 20% discount on the day; if you are interested in buying from Cabbage White, it’s worth following them on Instagram or signing up to their newsletter as there are frequent discounts and offers.

Once again, thank you to Kelly from Cabbage White for my tickets, both my friend and I had a really lovely day!

And that’s my my round-up… for now.

I haven’t mentioned all the delicious cheeses and amazingly scrumptious food stuffs my friend and I stuffed ourselves with, and in terms of Christmas Spirit, there were plenty of weird and wonderful flavoured Gin’s to be sampled as well as other christmassy spirits and mulled wines.

I will be featuring a few other brands I came across on my ‘Alternative Christmas Gift Guide for Fashionistas’ … to follow, next week.

So, what do you think of my Little Leggies cashmere sweater with a pop of neon?  Definitely my favourite new brand discovery!  And those Brooks running shoes in black & quartz: to get or not?

As always, I love reading your comments – especially if you visited the fair last week?

Thank you

Bx