Vogue's Fashion Night Out: London

Ah it's that time of year again. Vogue's Fashion Night Out (FNO). I was here this time last year and up for it again tonight. Here are the highlights;

First stop is Mulberry for dancing, cocktails, prize draws, goodie bags, manicures, tarot reading and face painting. I love this store. Everyone was buzzing, all the usual staff were there including Daniel, my favourite!


He was run off his feet it was so busy, but he still recognised me and came over to say Hi. Oddly uniformed staff were handing out bottles of beer, cocktails and delicious canapes from picnic style hampers, in fitting with their woodland theme.

Despite how crazy the store was the staff were excellent; friendly, fun and helpful. One big party. This is definitely what Fashion Night Out is about. There is something so fun about shopping with a cocktail in your hand and half of London's fashion crowd hanging around you. Girls are getting their photos taken with woodland creature masks on draped in handbags. This is the best party in FNO!

Bond Street is definitely the place to be and so on I went to Boodles. I love the welcome you get in here. "Welcome to Boodles!" "Glass of Champagne?" "Why yes, don't mind if I do."

So many diamonds so little time. But there was time to eat a cream tea or two and look at the engagement rings, thinking which one would look best on my left hand. Will I ever get to find out????

It's quieter in here, the doorman helps that out, but they still had a good bar going and a photo booth. I thought of trying on the biggest diamond ring they have and then stepping in to the photo booth to capture the moment forever....and then thought no, leave the photo booth to the groups of giggling girls. My attention is firmly on the shiny stuff!

Next door is Tiffany and it didn't look as if they'd done too much different to the store. There was a DJ in the corner and a photo booth (must have been on discount) and pretty good food. But the best of Bond Street for Fashion Night Out, was definitely Mulberry for me.

So see you next year, same time, same channel!

Ciao.

Senna: The story of the greatest F1 driver

I feel drained. It's the movie where everyone knows the ending. You know it's coming, you really don't want to see it but you want to hear the story, you want to know more than the TV showed you at the time, back in 1994.

'Senna' is an incredible look back at Ayrton's life from karting through to his tragic fatal accident in 1994. There was so much I hadn't seen or heard before, being a bit too young at the time, but I always remember the accident itself; where I was, how I felt, the extraordinarily long time he was left in the car before the medical team arrived, the reaction of the other drivers and the worldwide public grief over the loss of the greatest F1 racing driver.

This movie/documentary tells of Ayrton's struggle against his competitors, predominantly Alain Prost and the FIA. It shows you the man underneath the race suit. I won't lie to you, it's emotional. I cried, a lot, but I'm so glad I saw it. To relive the great ones F1 career, the ups and downs, how the move to F1 and becoming 3 time world champion changed him, but also how grounded and humble he was.

There are moments of joy, surprise, humour, love and, of course, loss. He was a great man and what a great way to remember him.

Why women like designer shoes; and other observations.

Why do we like designer shoes? Yes, they are usually very well designed and flattering to the leg, but if no-one was going to see you wearing them, would you pay £500+ for those red soled Louboutins? Would you pay £500 if they didn't have red soles?

Clever marketing, celebrity endorsements and what we see our peers wearing creates associations in our minds of the type of lifestyle we aspire to have. And so we strive to have those things to achieve that lifestyle or at least give the impression that we have. It is an indicator of our social status and therefore how successful we are.

I have used the example of women liking expensive shoes but this forms part of everyone's everyday life and every purchasing decision we make. What coffee you drink, newspaper you read, sandwich you eat, phone you have, car you drive etc all say a lot about you, a lot about how you want the world to perceive you.

In case you're wondering I'm..Starbucks, The Times, Pret, iPhone, Bentley.
Just kidding about the Bentley. Living in central London, I don't drive! But you get the idea.

Why is this important? Why do we want the world to perceive us in a certain way? Of course there is an element of preference. I do prefer the taste of Starbucks to Nero, for example, as I find it way too bitter. But I like Pret coffee about as much as I do Starbucks. But it is Starbucks that I drink every morning; Starbucks where they remember my order; Starbucks mugs in my cupboard; a Starbucks app on my iPhone and a Starbucks card in my purse. That's where I align myself; that's what I feel is the best fit for me. I only get coffee elsewhere if there isn't a Starbucks available.

And that's where the essence of this situation lies, in fitting in. We are animals after all and we have not only a herd mentality but also a need to belong; a need to belong to a group. It's a natural instinct dating back to when safety in numbers when hunting and being hunted was a matter of life or death. That has stayed with us somewhat today.

Back to the shoe analogy. Do you wear Crocs, Uggs, Birkenstocks, Converse, Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, Dr Martins...? (Please feel free to continue that list with whatever brands I haven't remembered). What you wear is an expression of who you are and who you want to be, or who you want others to think you are. It tells those around you a lot about the type of person you are, how you're likely to act and to gain and secure social acceptance in a group of like minded individuals. It's your uniform that shows you belong.

So when you next choose a certain type of beer, sunglasses, magazine, handbag etc. Have a think about what it says about you and what you are telling the rest of us about yourself.

iPad 2 released on 25th March in UK

The iPad 2 is thinner, lighter and faster than its predecessor, with front and back cameras (a feature badly missed on the first iPad) and will be released earlier than planned in the UK, with a March 25th launch. But,  pleasingly, it will be at the same price as the first iPad, which is already being discounted.


Steve Jobs took to the stage once more to unveil the new product and is now adorning the front page of the morning's newspapers. Will this be his last big public appearance? With Jonathan Ive (the designer behind the iPhone and iPad range) threatening to leave and Steve Jobs perhaps making his last stand, is this the end of an era for Apple? And if so, what will they come up with next?

Also, you have to think that the early launch of the iPad2 is making room for an early iPhone 5 release too. We know Apple are keen to launch that soon given the issue with the iPhone 4 antenna, so are we looking at May for the next generation iPhone? I hope so, I'm bored of my old Nokia and carrying around my iTouch too!

Men of London: we thank you!

I would like to say a big thank you, as it's not said often enough, to all the men who let ladies sit down first on the Tube.

This is obviously not just limited to London, or indeed the Tube, but as that is my commute it is all I can comment on.

It would be sexist of me to say that men should give up their seats for women, so please be assured that I am not saying that. I don't need anyone to hold the door open for me, carry my bags or give me their seat. But it's rather nice when they do and I always make sure I thank them for being so kind.

This gesture is not just appreciated between the sexes but for anyone who would appreciate the seat more.
I often give my seat up for anyone carrying a lot or anything heavy, or for anyone that looks tired. This small, but good, deed is always appreciated and so I think we should do it more often.

So, come on Londoners, let's bring chivalry back!

Do we need to be 'social' to be happy?

The BBC is reporting this week on happiness. One of the theories they are exploring is that of happiness being linked to having friends and family i.e. not being lonely.

Does this therefore add to what I wrote in a previous post about the socially deprived using social networks?

If we need interaction and friendship to be happy, but either don't have many friends or live alone, then it makes sense that we look to social networks for interaction when we are by ourselves.

Friendship has a bigger contribution to happiness than income. The BBC reports that the equivalent income needed to make up for the lack of friendship is £50,000. Other key elements are having meaning in life, a belief in something bigger and having goals to achieve, that you enjoy.

So with such dependency on interaction and friendship for happiness, the social media haters should perhaps use it a bit more and find themselves being a bit happier!

Career: play safe or go risky?

Are you a bear or a bull when it comes to your career? Do you go charging out there getting everything you can or do you hide in your cave?

It can depend on your commitments. If you have a mortgage, kids etc, then you may not be in a situation to risk the regular income. But if you do gamble then the rewards could be commensurate with that.

Imagine, you find yourself in a good job; you enjoy it, like the people there and find the work interesting. Now imagine you get offered a better job; better in terms of money, status, responsibility and opportunity. It is likely that the new job will have you working all hours but if you are successful it will firmly stamp you as the best in the field and cement your reputation for the rest of your career. If it goes wrong, your CV is severely tarnished.

So it's a benefit v risk analysis. But also a chance to try something new, find a new opportunity, a new path on the journey. Who knows where it will take you.

If you are at the time of your life when you can afford the long hours and your current job can't really offer you more than it does already, then maybe it's time for a change. If you're good at what you do then you will succeed in the new job and if you're not then maybe it's time for a career change anyway. If you stay in the safe job you have, you will never know what you could have been and where that path could have taken you.

Baby or Career? It seems we need to choose between them.

Dr Tony Falconer has advised that the ideal age to have a baby is between 20 and 35.

This has been widely reported in the national press e.g Guardian and The Times, which also talks about teaching young girls about the ideal age to start a family as part of the school sex education classes. This really means asking girls to decide if they want a career or an early family whilst they are still at school.

What about those of us who have had that choice taken away? The single 30-something women who know time is not on their side, if they want their life to go as their mothers did and how they were taught theirs should;

1. Meet someone special
2. Move in with them
3. Get engaged
4. Get married
5. Start a family

Bearing in mind that you also probably imagined having a year or two at each stage before you move on to the next.

Do those of us approaching 35, and still single, have to give up the ideal plan on which we have based our lives so far? Will relationships now have to move far quicker than we'd like in order to keep that plan on track? Will we end up settling for second best to get on the family ladder rather than waiting for something we're really looking for?

Would it be so bad to not have children at all? I know a few women in their 50s who don't have children and have a seemingly great lifestyle. Similar to how mine is now. Do I want to give that up? Should I stop worrying and let whatever will be, be?

As a Director of a City based firm I am at a critical stage of my career. If I hang on and make the next step then I might be set up to be able to take time off for children without jeopardising my career too much. But to take a break now would be a serious set back. Probably a good job that I am currently single then!

But teaching young girls about when they need to have children is all well and good as long as you teach the boys about that too. Otherwise we'll have a generation of girls trying to tie boys down early and a generation of boys running for their lives!

Also, we have to consider that not everyone is destined to be a mother or have that perfect nuclear family unit. At what point do you decide, or is it decided for you, whether you'll be a mother or the childless career woman who supports her friends who have that idyllic family life that she was brought up to expect for herself? Maybe not all of us are destined to be mothers and we should accept that and not see it as a failure, just a different lifestyle.

The family woman and her childless friend may well have a turbulent relationship where the other is grateful for their own lifestyle but also has an element of jealousy over the other's. The mother wants the independent, cash-rich lifestyle and the career woman wants the homely family life. The grass is always greener.

Perhaps it's the start of a New Year, The Times article, or because I'm days away from another birthday that will take me closer to be the big 3-5, that has caused me to panic. Maybe I should just accept what I have, and what comes to me, when it does. If that means a husband and children, that's wonderful.

The thing is that I don't feel at all ready for children right now. I can't imagine having them now even if I was married. Maybe the desire for children only comes when that stable environment presents itself. Maybe it won't come for me at all. Well, according to The Times, I've only got a few more years for that situation, and the desire, to present itself. No pressure then!

Driving home for Christmas?

So, when you find the trains can't cope with a few centimetres of snow and you need to get home for Christmas, what do you do?

You could always get a coach but getting to the station is such a hassle and being sat in a confined space for five hours isn't how I want to start my Christmas holiday. Not being able to walk around, no food and drink served to kick off the festive spirit and what are the chances of the toilet working?

I looked into getting a cab home. Yes, someone could probably come and get me but it's a long round trip and who would want to be on the motorway when they could be at home, safe and warm eating mince pies!

So, online I went. First, I tweeted @tweetalondoncab; they came back to me straight away quoting £300. I should mention this is to pick me up from the office in central London and drive up the motorway to Nottinghamshire.

I thought I should probably get competitive quotes and have used Addison Lee a few times recently over the Christmas party period, so I used their online quote system and got a quote for £450. Too much.

A Google search revealed an online quote from Ero Carriages for £250 and an online taxi search portal gave quotes for £200 and £165!

So why the big difference? £165 - £450! Is this another case of rip-off Britain and big companies taking advantage of people desperate to get home for Christmas? Whatever the case, if the trains are down and you're looking for other ways to get away, then it pays to hunt around for the best price. It could save you, well £285, quite a nice Christmas present in itself!

Do we really need a new newspaper? i newspaper from The Independent thinks so.

With the advances in online publishing and in the era of handheld devices and smartphones accessing online content, you do have to wonder why a new newspaper is launching in the UK at the time when everyone is trying to predict the death of the printed newspaper.

The Independent, not happy with one publication has produced the i, to attract a "different target market". You also have to wonder at the title, i, is it trying to make a tenuous link with the success of the iPod, iPhone, iPad etc? Is that going to resonate with the "dumbed down" segment of The Independent's readership?

It reads like one of the free London evening papers, yet with a 20p price tag. Covering a wide range of stories, but not in any particular depth. The most engaging articles being on whether Bert from Sesame Street is gay and the fact that Sony has just stopped producing walkmans. Yes, you read that correctly, the tape cassette walkman. I think the main headline there should have been that Sony was actually still producing them until recently - who knew!

As the population moves online and then online on-the-go, I feel that the 'instantly downloaded, easy to read in high winds, won't leave ink on your hands' online versions of papers will leave little room for the printed ones. As readerships decrease, the cost of those huge printing presses will look like an indulgence, similar to Wayne Rooney sipping Champagne in Dubai celebrating his new £250,000 a week salary, compared with the cost of publishing online.

So, i paper, how long shall we give it? A year? Two? I think 'the paper for today' doesn't have a very prosperous tomorrow.

Vogue's Fashion Night Out: London

London can be so much fun sometimes! One of those times is for Vogue's Fashion Night Out.

I headed early doors to Christian Louboutin; tried on a pair of serious heels, drank Champagne and grabbed a goodybag on the way out. Next on to Chanel in Selfridges, where I got a fabulous lipstick consultation and had a very glamourous photo taken in their photo booth. I ended up buying the lipstick - Rouge Coco baby!

Reiss was next; great cocktails, tried on a few clothes, avoided the makeovers, deafened by the overloud DJ - I'm getting old. Finally, back to Selfridges for Mulberry, which felt unecessarily VIP. Very oddly dressed waiters served 200ml bottles of Champagne, one of which was smuggled out for the journey home in my handbag! A wander round the make-up, perfume and jewellery counters was enough to call it a night.

The glamour then ended as I headed on to the tube feeling that - for one night - I was part of the London fashion scene and a little bit 'Carrie Bradshaw'.

Vogue - please keep doing your Fashion Night Out. Maybe I'll go to the New York one next year!

Always on: Have we forgotten how to relax?

It seems that we need to plan time to relax these days, rather than it just being a part of our lives.

It is no longer possible to just take a night to chill out, switch off and relax. Our lives are so busy, there is so much to do with those few hours between work and bed that we are 'always on'. So, it appears we need to go out of our way to get away from this and truly relax.

We tend to fill any moments of downtime such as the commute home with playing games, sudoku, email, learning and even working! We don't take the time to let our brains rest and just think, marking the end of the working day and the start of our own time. We are 'always on' with something. Does this effect us when we get home? Were we calmer before? Or are our brains sharper now that they are always in fifth gear?

I found myself recently on a spa weekend with a friend, with nothing to do but have a few treatments, lounge around and eat. This was quite unnerving. I wasn't really comfortable with doing nothing and found myself filling the time. I exercised more in one day than I usually do in a week; wrote more material for blogs than I normally do in a month and checked in online far more often than is healthy! So my body was on downtime, but my brain wasn't slowing down with it.

We should introduce some downtime back in to our everyday lives; just closing our eyes and taking time to think, feel and just be. Perhaps then we wouldn't need to make another action point in our over busy lives...Monday 9.00am - must plan some time in to relax.

What if Facebook died?

So, today Twitter managed to temporarily lose its following/follower counts. They were restored very quickly and everything now appears to be fine. But, it got me thinking about what would happen if they weren't.

How would we feel if Twitter lost our followers and Facebook lost our friends? Would you be able to remember them all to try and get them all back? Would you want to?

What about if all the conversations, tags and photos were lost? What if your whole profile disappeared? Or if Twitter and Facebook blew up completely, gone forever with your social world with them?

Would you see it as an opportunity to start again or would you be totally devastated? Are we more attached to our online social networks than our real world ones?

It wouldn't just be the people we lost that would be difficult to deal with, it would be the process of our engagement with them. The daily check for updates, the tweeting and liking and posting of comments etc, is what allows us to communicate with more friends than we ever could offline.

It would take weeks to see all our friends individually, and when we do we don't tend to talk about all the day to day things we've been up to. So by losing what many see as ever more distant relationships, we'd actually lose the closeness.

Turning 30

So, I turned 30 this year and I did what I should imagine a lot of women do when they turn 30; I pondered on what I had achieved so far in my life. I wondered if I was on the right track to achieve everything I want to in the future and then... do I look thirty? Do I look older!

But then the neurosis passes and before you know it you're walking around as if you own the whole town. Being 30 feels fabulous. I feel like I've gained some sort of extra confidence and that helps, especially if you wake up to a new wrinkle!

They say life begins at 30. I wonder if I'll be so positive when I approach the big 4-0!