Lifestyle: A Day Out In Birmingham

Happy Sunday everyone, hope you had a great weekend so far. I started mine with a fabulous day out in Birmingham on Friday including a visit to the famous Clothes Show with blogger friend Karen from StyleSunrise.

Since August (at least!) the blogosphere went mad over the Clothes Show. I've never been but heard it was supposed to be the second biggest fashion event after famous fashion fair Pure in London. A fashion event in the Midlands? Sounded great and I was pretty upset, when I was rejected a press pass to the Clothes Show (though I met their requirements but that's a different story). Anyway, luck had it, that I won two tickets for the show with Olympus over on Twitter, so I was definitely going which excited me a lot to not miss out on what seemed to be a great event for bloggers and fashion lovers. I asked Karen to join me, so we met at 8:30am to start the day early and got the most out of it.

|The Clothes Show|

I've been to a few fairs at the NEC before (the BBC food show and Gadget Show) so I was kind of assuming, the Clothes Show would be a fashion/trade fair, with brands introducing their new products. I couldn't have been more wrong. There were brands such as Binky, Rimmel, Asos and Models Own but apart from that, most "fashion brands" were no-name brands each selling the same items. There was this poncho which I've been watching for a while now, and it comes £20 on Ebay (at the most!). At the Clothes Show, I've seen it at least at four different stalls retailing at £35 and over (some even didn't have a price tag, so free I assume).

I decided to go on a Friday in the hope to not be amongst kids, but it was bursting with school children all over the place, even at 9am! Karen and I wondered if they dropped out of school or if there were any holidays on. It was insane!

Anyway, we had tickets for the fashion show at 12:30 so we sat down at the Alcatel Theatre and watched a really good runway show, which was centred around a year in New York with cool dancers and very pretty models. It was such a joy to watch the show and the atmosphere was superb.

Karen and I had a look around at the Clothes Show but nothing really caught our eyes and we enjoyed walking around, spotting the one and other "celebrity" (Peter Andre, Amy Childs and we went past Neon Jungle a few times) and chatting to each other. Overall I don't think I'll return next year to the Clothes Show. The tix would have cost £30 each if I had to buy them and it felt like you paid entrance to a big shop. You had to pay for "goodie bags" and it just seemed to be not worth it. I was expecting it to be a bit more like a fair where you meet brands and find out about their products (oh I'm spoilt by the Bloggers Love hub events) which didn't happen. It was really just selling products and I don't see a sense in buying an overpriced ticket to go shopping.

|Birmingham Markets And Bodega|

In the afternoon, Karen and I went into town and had a cheeky Bodega meal. Bodega is kind of mandatory when you're in Birmingham. It is soo good. They do South-American food and their nachos are divine!

We also had a chocolate filled crêpe at the Christmas markets, checked out the Canal Side in The Mail Box area, took pictures of each other with the Bull, who wears a fancy new Christmas jumper and tried Costa's new festive drinks.

I had a fantastic day and it was such a pleasure to meet Karen. Thank you so much for a wonderful day and a great time! Let's do it all again any time soon :)

Hope you've enjoyed today's post. Thanks for reading and please check out Karen's amazing beauty and lifestyle blog. Have you been to the Clothes Show? What did you think of it? If you'd like to see how I dressed for the Clothes Show, you can find my Clothes Show OOTD here.

Till next time,

xx CAZ xx

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