In its 24th year, the Clothes Show Live in Birmingham’s N.E.C attracts fashion lovers from all over the country for a massive five day event every December.
I was already a big fan of the event, having been several years in a row, however this year Chloé Fallon and myself were lucky enough to get the chance to attend as reporting press and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Read our review of the show and the day, check out the gallery below for all the photos from the day, and enjoy!
The Clothes Show consists of a unique shopping experience filling the whole N.E.C, and ‘The Show’; a fashion come dance catwalk, showing throughout the day. We started off seeing the second show of the day, which was hosted by Designer Henry Holland and stylist Grace Woodward.
The Show
The theme was ‘a day in the life of a fashion magazine’ with an Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, look-a-like strutting down the catwalk in the first scene. Throughout the show she ticked off events on a ‘to do list’, the first a male model casting, which saw semi naked models on stage cheered on by the excited female audience. We did spot model BB strutting his stuff, who you may remember from E4 show Dirty, Sexy Things.
The catwalk changed to one of our favourite scenes, a high-energy celebration of London street style set in hip Shoreditch High Street. The outfits were quirky, bright and outrageous and the models danced around the stage to a soundtrack celebrating the best of British talent, such as Ellie Goulding ‘Anything Could Happen’.
Throughout the nine scenes in total, we saw a photo-shoot in Rio, London Fashion week, an awards show and even a Nicki Minaj tribute video shoot.
The show closed with the after party, and the models broke out with a Gangnam style dance off, even Anna Wintour made a final appearance. Everyone was dressed in cool hip-hop clothing and we had major shoe envy for the girls sliver Nike Airmax’s wedges.
The Shopping
The event was spilt into areas such as beauty, clothes and vintage zones.
The atmosphere around the venue was excitable, with loads freebies and with discounts from Company magazine, Rimmel, Barry M and Models Own we were in our element. The vintage area was our favourite, trends such as military jackets with fur collars, tie –dye jumpers and customised Levi shorts were everywhere.
We managed to catch the Britain and Ireland’s next top model catwalk during the day too. All the final girls from the Living TV show were showing off some of the unique finds from the designers exhibiting this year. Check out the gallery below for a glimpse of the girls.
We also spotted Lee Stafford doing a hair tutorial on volunteer. He talked us through how to achieve a cropped style and give us tips for the perfect DIY fridge cut.
Check out our Gallery for all the best bits, and click here for an exclusive interview with Karl Willett, fashion director for the Clothes Show!
