Hollyoaks Stars, Freebies Galore and Thousands of Students!

We've just returned from a busy, busy weekend at UCAS Students Live, a two day exhibition of all things studenty at London Olympia. We were in the fashion area (of course) alongside fabulous jewellery brand Regal Rose, the student favourite One Piece, new fashion social media site TheMuse.tv and cute fashion brand Mela Loves London.

We met loads of great people, most of whom were off to start their uni adventure in a couple of weeks and were very excited about it. They were stocking up on new term fashion essentials- it was all about the cost knits and quirky jewellery.

We were running a jewellery lucky dip promotion, these lucky ladies each got a surprise piece of free jewellery when they signed up for our mailing list. Unsurprisingly this proved very popular, so we'll definitely be bringing it back for Clothes Show Live 2012!

We also had a couple of well known customers, namely Tom Scurr and David Atkins, who play Barney and Rob in Hollyoaks. They snapped up a couple of pairs of matching flip up sunglasses. Aww, don't they look cute!

Fancy a piece of the action? We'll be traveling across the UK in the next few weeks for freshers fairs and vintage fairs galore. You can find out where we're headed here.

Minimum Mouse at Clothes Show Live 2011

Our stand - it wasn't this quiet very often!

We're just recovering from one of the busiest weeks of our lives - Clothes Show Live 2011! This fashion behemoth sets up camp once a year at the NEC in Birmingham (which conveniently happens to be just down the road from our house) so this year we decided to take a chance and be a part of it. Our little stall was part of the Anita's Vintage Fashion Fair area which, though I am biased, was one of the best areas of the show - full of unique treats and with a more laid back and less corporate vibe than some of the areas.

Vintage Jewels

More of Anita's Vintage Fair

It was a long 6 days - with screaming girls, pumping beats and bargain hungry shoppers everywhere, we were tucked up in bed by 10pm most nights! Not being a viewer of Hollyoaks or TOWIE I was quite amused by the regular stampedes of girls chasing after people from these shows, but I was more appreciative of the free Haagen Dazs and Diet Coke being handed about from time to time! It was interesting too, as the people who came to shop at our stand were often not our usual market and hadn't really shopped for vintage before - we had many questions like 'have you got this in another size?' or 'have you got more of these?' and some interesting comments from people who struggled to understand that the clothes had been worn before, but for the most part the people we met were enthusiastic and friendly, and it was quite exciting to see people taking their first steps into vintage fashion.

Our neighbours were the superb Le Keux Events & The Vintage Salon, who were offering vintage hairstyling and makeovers, and were also doing demonstrations about vintage hair on the Inspiration Stage. See below for a picture of my sister Elise, who came along to help us out on some of the days, having had her hair and make up done and looking very glamorous.

Also next to us were the lovely folks from Vintage Life Magazine, Trunk Junkies Vintage, Kate and Aud, Love The Baroness, Your Vintage Life and Borderline Vintage and over in the purple zone were our friends from Syd & Mallory - you need to check all these folks out, they're amaazing!

All in all it was a rollercoaster week, but an amazing experience!