Birmingham International Fashion Week 2013: Event Coverage

If you’ve been keeping up with my recently on my blog, Twitter and Facebook, you’ll have seen that I’ve been appointed as Birmingham Fashion Week’s Street Style Searcher and an Official Blogger. 

If you haven’t been quite up to date recently (tut tut!) you can read my first blog post introducing the competition here and read all about my day searching the streets here. Oh, and y’all can even watch my video of my search here! 

So, on to Birmingham’s very first International Fashion Week (or weekend!) itself and my adventure down in Brum!

With that being said, I do feel that we can look at the day in soft lighting and be a little more gentle about it, having it been the very first event of it’s kind. With every first time, there will be obstacles to come and I am sure that Elpromotions (who put on the event) have gained a big insight into what will be needed for next year – which I hope I will be lucky enough to experience, too!

I was welcomed to the event by Suzie from Birmingham International Fashion Week, who I cannot praise highly enough for her friendliness. Suzie told me to feel free to join the VIP section as I’d taken the time before the event to take the couple of hours journey to Brum to make a video for the Street Style Search – which was a very nice gesture but when I approached the VIP section I was told I “wasn’t allowed” in. Oh! Just a little bit embarrassing…

So, I settled for the popcorn and Redbull in the Press Area, which I didn’t have any qualms with and soon enough it was time to take a seat (which I was asked to move from to another, haha, brilliant) for my first fashion show.

The second fashion show of the day – which was my first – was Dawn Sunflower. I hadn’t heard of Dawn Sunflower before the event but she had a very unusual collection. Her collection was mainly dresses, which had deep, dark colours and lots of clashing textures. I remember seeing safetly pins, purposeful rips and lots of velvet and tartan. It was such an interesting collection and after the show Dawn was kind enough to take the time to speak to me (and she is a lovely lady, we are definitely keeping in touch). The interview you see above was our second attempt at a chat, as Shuut Films interrupted us mid filming on our first take and ushered Dawn away for their own filming – I left that one out of the bloopers, haha!  

There was then about an hour break before the next show, which was Sofia D Couture. I met Sofia in December when I attended another one of her fashion shows and I have keep in touch with her, also. She is absolutely lovely and has such a spirit about her that you can really see in her clothes – her garments are so glamorous and sophisticated. Her collection was beautiful, as ever, full of formal dresses that emphasise and flatter the female shape. I am hoping that one day Sofia will let me wear one of her dresses to a suitably glamorous event. I was planning to interview Sofia but unfortunately when I asked I was told I was not allowed back stage – so the interview will have to wait for another day!

After Sofia’s collection, there was a performance from Times Red, but it was already around 2pm and having been up super early to travel from Manchester and already been at the event for a couple of hours, I just had to nip and have something to eat. I was only away for a couple of minutes and came straight back to walk around the stalls, although I didn’t purchase anything.

There were probably about ten exhibition stands at the event. My favourites were Kriss X Chi Vintage, which specialise in beautiful handmade jewellery and Sample Clothing, which sold slightly refurbished vintage clothing – both right up my street! I was lucky enough to bag a pair of cute teacup earrings from Kriss X Chi Vintage, which I am sure will be in an Outfit of the Day soon, and thoroughly enjoyed browsing their other beautiful items – I now have my eyes on the stunning teapot necklace to match! 

It was 2ish by this time and the next fashion show wasn’t until 5pm. I decided not to stay until the second session started so I can’t comment what the evening or the second day were like.   I believe the competition winners were announced on the Sunday but I am not sure what happened to the Street Style Competition. I think there were plans to announce the winner as I had a last min phone call on Sunday afternoon to ask for contact details, but I didn’t hear back after that. So – congrats to whoever won!

Over all, I am very happy that I was able to attend Birmingham’s very first international fashion week, especially as I have such a personal connection to Brum and fond memories of the city. I had a nice day out and it was great to visit Birmingham again – hopefully I will be able to document next year’s event, too!

Now I can’t wait for Manchester Fashion Week 2013 and I can’t wait to bring y’all along with me too! It’s set to be a fab week of festivities and I will be showing y’all what Manchester is made of. I’ll also be blogging and vlogging away about the day’s events and keeping you all up to date on my Facebook and Twitter pages.