So, like a responsible young, working adult, all year I had been planning that once I receive my tax money I would put it away so I had plenty of money to buy all of my family and friend’s Christmas presents. Then… my mother, who had planned on doing the same thing, decided we should go for “lunch” at DFO and she can get my little brother some new sneakers at a good price…

Have you seen the sales at DFO?! I know I’m very interested in fashion and current trends and DFO has lots of ‘last season’ stock… but for the prices it doesn’t matter! I mean there were mint green skinny jeans reduced from $79.95 to $10.50! They had four other colours so I got them too! Needless to say, I am fully equipped for Summer… or life! I got 2012 bathers from Seafolly for $40, Some shoes from Forvever New for about $15, 11 tops, some shorts, overalls, skirts, makeup, a towel??, some jewellery, …. but no lunch!

The point of this post is, get your responsible saving butt down to DFO! Stat! 🙂

This took a lot of time… Hair, makeup, accessories… and it takes two people, apart from myself to do up this corset-stlye dress! Sorry I missed this week but the Comm Ball was fun! Also, this is my little beauty/ fashion blog post for the week…

Dress: Sherri Hill

Shoes and Clutch: Betts for Her

Hair: curling iron and teasing- done by me, pretty easy 🙂

Makeup: Bold smoky eye, bright lips, fake eyelashes, done by me again :)… saving $$$

Fake-tan: A friend of mine’s beauty business… $25 check her services out here… Crystal Beauty Therapy 

So it’s London fashion week this week, and prominent designer Vivienne Westwood used her runway presentation as a platform to express her views on “humanity’s current path of destruction”.

Climate change was an overwhelming theme in the designer’s runway line, featuring garments sporting slogans about climate change in floral print and earthy colours.

Westwood even went as far to portray animals caught in car headlights by styling models and having makeup to look like corpses. Perhaps Westwood shares Jaques Ellul’s view that technology is corrupting humankind and we are losing sight of what is most important and what is not really needed?

Here is a great report on the story, plus a few images and a video of supermodel Lily Cole opening the runway show.

I did it! I couldn’t wait any longer! www.fairychell.blogspot.com

Now that the blog assessment has been submitted I feel like the incentive to do well on blog posts is going to deteriorate among my peers. But I have really enjoyed it so this is my pledge to continue to get 10/ 10 for my participation record for the rest of the semester, not only because I am a stress-head who freaks out about anything less than a HD, but because I want to stay in the habit of blogging. Like I said 6 weeks ago when we started this blogging adventure, I have always wanted to do it. And now that I have had a little taste I want this even more. As soon as the semester ends and I start my intensive summer course at the RMIT fashion school, I am going to create a brand new blog dedicated to fashion and beauty and random daily life things. I am an avid blog reader and I now have the motivation and skills to start my own. I don’t mind if my readership is small to start with, the record of my thoughts is simply satisfying for me.

I am actually really excited about doing this and my intentions are bigger than I even think possible at the moment. I’d like to start a youtube ‘vlog’ as well so I can start up a fashion/ beauty personality profile. I’d really like to know what blog spaces are best for this type of blogging. Do I need to pay for one? Can I desdign my own template instead of using one that is already created and available? What other websites offer blogs? I only know of mediafactory and wordpress. These are the questions distracting me from my homework! 🙂

After a recent expensive trip to L’Occitane in Melbourne Central last week, I thought I might get myself a treat. (read: you’ve already spent $200 on perfume for your mum, whats $40 more?)

I am so glad I tried this product. I rely on deep conditioning products to keep my hair from literally breaking off! The amount of heat and chemicals I apply to it on a daily basis should mean I have no hair left. I use a deep-conditioning treatment once a week. And I have tried so many. Most of which I have loved. But this product just raised the bar for me.

The product distributes well on damp-wet hair and soaks in to the hair pores until it is barely visible. Leaving in for between 5-10 minutes your hair starts to feel heavy, for lack of a better word, but this was actually really satisfying for me. When I washed it out my hair was more soft and smooth than it had ever been before, but what was a new element for me, and the reason I will repurchase this product, is that it didn’t leave my hair feeling light and stripped of its natural oils. It felt really strong and healthy. And the rose scent is just a bonus! But you know you’re going to smell great with any product you use from L’Occitane, thats just a given.

But give this a go 🙂 xxx

I have a few key rules that I like to stick to when creating an outfit. Fashion and style is very important to me and has been all my life. I have on numerous occasions made my Mum walk back upstairs and change her wide-legged pants or ditch the dangly earings if she is also wearing a statement necklace. But this week I broke 2 of my top 2 rules in one outfit, and I was actually excited to be seen in public wearing it! (I wasn’t running a fever. I checked)

So, what are these rules I broke and why were they no-nos in the first place?

1. HORIZONTAL STRIPES!!!! My biggest hate! Horizontal stripes do nothing but highlight  how wide you are… and then make you look even wider. My rule was simple. Never. Go. There. I bid myself if I must venture into the stripy abyss I would only do so where the garment was panelled and the striped were any which way but straight from left to right. But I did it. I recently bought a t-shirt in the hope to pull off a Taylor Swift-esque style for the day from Ally Fashion. One of my favourite stores. Here is the actual top! Dirt cheap and really comfy 🙂 And what was I going to do with this top that I stood in the dressing room, looking in the mirror for a good 12 minutes contemplating ‘going there’? I was going to team it with my second biggest hate…

2. Vinyl or ‘Pleather’ pants! These things are distracting for all the wrong reasons. They hug your thighs so tightly that there is no hiding or disguising your actual size. But something must be in the water. Or air. Or my daily hot chocolates. I bought 2 pairs. One pain of shiny vinyl imitation high-waited leggings and a par of normal cotton leggings with leather panels down the sides. I teamed the prior with my horizontal t-shirt and high-heel high-top gold sparkly sneakers and headed out. The vinyl high-waisted beauties went with a high-necked, red peplum top. And I felt kinda good. Maybe these pants are magical like gym pants and they suck you in and give you the illusion of trim, terrific and toned, maybe the stripes are ok if you have magic pants that make you appear skinny on the bottom half so the people who look at you just assume that its all the stripes’ fault that you look so landscape.

Ok so magic isn’t the answer. The answer is that the designers of these garments are coming to realise that it’s not so realistic that young women today are going to have the same tall, sculpted frame as Taylor Swift. They are finally recognising these issues and designing their clothes to accommodate the average girl’s needs and wants. Opposite to my fashion No-No’s, I have my ‘security blanket’ tricks for all girls’ shapes and sizes which the makers of my new clothes have incorporated into my new favourite pieces:

1. Panelling- instantly gives the illusion of being thinner- the side panels on my pleather pants are like imaginary scissors chopping off that much of my legs.

2. High-waisted- Pretty self-explanatory. Keeps everything in, makes you feel tall and look like your legs are about a foot and a half longer than they actually are.

3. Scoop-necklines- The horizontal stripes would still be out if the t-shirt was high-necked. It would just make me look broad. The scoop-cut shows a feminine figure and eliminates the broad, wide structure that horizontal stripes tend to create on the upper half of the female body.

4. Peplum- Hello hourglass figure (read: Marilyn Monroe). The curtaining out of the fabric at the waist shows off your thinnest area (the centre of your waist) and flows out to an hourglass shape, which is beautiful.

Remember: You don’t have to be 6 foot tall, weigh 50 kg and look like Barbie… You have to be happy with the way you look, and for me, just like every other body-image self-conscious girl, sometimes that only comes when I am fully dressed to highlight the things I like most about my body, and take attention (particularly mine) away from the things less-lovable. So try something new, see if those designers are on your side. After all they should be, who’s going to buy clothes that make me feel like a blonde haired whale? Thankyou to the fashion industry, you have finally caught up with reality!

Here are a few initiatives that I am very proud to be supporters of that are worth checking out:

– Vogue International Magazines have pledged not to knowingly use underweight models, models with eating disorders or unhealthy life-styles.

– Cosmopolitan Magazine Australia takes pride in featuring women of  all sizes in every issue and regularly takes charge and leads the way on better body image amongst women.

– Girlfriend magazine ‘no-retouching’ policy

– Dolly Magazine ‘Positive body image campaign’