Category: Vintage

Much love for the Powderpuff Girls: my vintage makeover

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I love the vintage look, but I don’t indulge myself very often. See my post on Hush – I work from home, and the postman just isn’t as ready with the compliments as she should be, so I generally slob around with no makeup on, wearing comfy clothes and a dressing gown (actually a Wonder Woman dressing gown – she’s glam, right?).

But when I do go all out, I like to do it properly, and one of my favourite indulgences is a makeover at The Powder Room!

This company offers a selection of reasonably priced beauty and hair services, and I’ve been there twice for makeovers since I found out about them. The first time was for my hen party, and the second was recently, when I had to attend a party for work.

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The salon isn’t that easy to get to on the Tube to be honest, you have to walk about 15-20 minutes from the nearest station, but once you get there it is totally worth it! There’s a lovely atmosphere, cocktails on hand (for £5, not bad!), and everyone is beautiful and happy. Heaven!

When you get your makeover from The Powder Room, they offer you a look book to go through with different hair styles or make up. Both times I’ve chosen the same thing – a pony tail with a quiff, and a cat-eye with red lip for my make up.
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Looks pretty snazzy in front of that Tube sign, doesn’t it? Totally unintentional, but I love it!

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The great thing about this make up is, it lasts so much longer than when I do it – and I can NEVER get my eye liner to flick like that, no matter how hard I try… Sigh. They also use lip liner, which is great – I so need to get one of those. It just makes everything look neater and last longer.

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Here’s a photo of the detail at the back – I’d never be able to get my hair looking like this in a million years… (And this is back at the hotel, after the party, about 12 hours later!)

Has anyone else been to this parlour of perfection? What did you get done? Anyone planning to go in the future? And, has anyone tried the ‘tricks of the trade’ lesson for £60? I would love to try that out!

Visit the boutique’s website here, or check out main site here – they also do events and parties, and they have an online shop as well!

Ascot Ladies’ Day!

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I love Ascot Ladies’ Day… Let me revise this. I love wearing a hat in the company of other, well-dressed hat wearers. I just really, really, REALLY love hats. But, I never wear hats. If you knew me, you might be surprised how much I love hats, because of my general lack of headwear. So, Ascot Ladies’ Day is the day I pay a wedge of cash to someone to let me into a field wearing a hat, so I can feel no shame all day long for indulging in my frivolous love of hats.

As it’s Jubilee year, this was my hat of choice:

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This is the Hobbs Britannia hat, and the moment I saw it in the paper, I had to have it. I bugged the hell out of the Hobbs customer service team until it was released, and as soon as it appeared on the site, I ordered it immediately. Then, it became the centrepiece of our grand scheme to colour co-ordinate for the day. I always go with two of my friends, Rachel and Lorraine, so it was decided that we should wear red, white and blue. I immediately bagged red, because it’s my favourite colour and I decided I needed an excuse to buy another red dress. I forgot I already had three. Rachel bagged white, and Lorraine went with blue. Then, we decided to each have one accessory with the Union flag on it. I already had my hat, so shoes and a bag were the obvious choices. For my wedding, I actually wore a pair of Union flag shoes, so Lorraine decided to track a pair down for herself.

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Rachel bought a really cool Union flag purse by LDC (and it was so cool I had to buy one too), and we were all set… apart from the dresses. At first we were all going to buy the same dress in different colours, but the one we had in mind just needed too much alteration, and the blue and the red weren’t particularly strong. So, we abandoned that idea and Rachel ended up with a beautiful white ASOS dress (that she won in a competition!) and Lorraine borrowed another ASOS dress from me. I wound up buying a pretty lace dress from Pepperberry. IMG_2929

Hilariously, I spent ages before the event agonising over whether everyone else would be wearing this hat, because I’d seen it in the press a lot after I bought it, and it was a fairly obvious choice considering even the venue was decked out in the flag to celebrate the Jubilee – but no one else was wearing it. Someone else did have on the exact same dress as me, though… Typical! IMG_2930

Here are Rachel and Lorraine – I cleverly cut off Lorraine’s amazing shoes, because I’m awesome at photography!

Needless to say, we had a great time. We won a third of our stake back, which is great, and we even got to stay for the singing around the bandstand! IMG_3037

If anyone has any other British hat-wearing events they can recommend to me, please do!