Fitting Room Adventures: Pepperberry

Pepperberry is the recently relaunched clothing range from underwear afficionados Bravissimo. Available in sizes 8 – 18 in three bust sizes (curvy, really curvy and super curvy) it aims to cater for women who’re fed up of having to buy a size bigger to accomodate their bust. As a DD/E cup, I own a couple of dresses from the old Bravissimo range (bought in the sales!) and they’re a beautiful fit, but in general the range had a tendency to be a bit frumpy and boring at times, so I was excited to see what they came up with in this new incarnation. I’d heard whisperings that there was a bit of a 50s influence, and the image above (the first to be released) definitely supported that idea…

2011: The year of dressing dangerously

I really enjoyed wearing a different dress every day during Dressember, and it was definitely great for helping me drag my old dresses out of the back of the wardrobe. But I also think it made me a bit lazy. Putting on some tights, throwing on a dress and some shoes and calling it an ‘outfit’ is a bit too easy for a fashion fan like me. Especially when all the tights are black and all the shoes are flat. One too many jersey dresses with a long-sleeved top have made even me admit that at the moment I look a bit…boring!

Tried & Tested: INES Collection’s plus size prints!

I’ve been sitting on this review for months (literally) because I didn’t want it to disappear in the middle of all the Dressember madness, so please forgive the fact I didn’t tell you all about INES Collection sooner! The brand (available at ShopTranslated.com, who ship internationally) offers affordable plus size dresses and blouses with an emphasis on prints – a great move as plus size fashion is so often black, black, black, and while some people can totally pull that off, others want a bit of colour!

I was sent the Graphic Pop dress ($72) and a ruched sleeve peacock print blouse to try out, so read on for how I got on!

Get your dresses on for Frocking Friday!

If you enjoyed following the ladies (and gents!) taking part in Dressember, then you might like to know that some of the folks taking part are continuing their challenge to wear more dresses by taking part in Frocking Fridays. The premise is simple – every friday you must wear a dress and upload the pic to the Facebook group. Don’t worry if you missed the first couple of weeks, you can still join in and take part for the rest of the year. You can repeat dresses so don’t worry if you don’t have 52 of them floating about, it’s all about getting out of your jeans and trying something a bit more glam!

Going Green with my glasses

Going through the contents of my bag the other day reminded me that I’d yet to blog about a recent discovery that’ll be right up your alley if you like your accessories practical, ethical and beautiful…and if you wear glasses! The brand in question is Modo Eco, who’re responsible for my latest pair of specs. I have a tiny prescription and only need my glasses for time spent in front of the computer or TV, so I’ve always worn glasses rather than contact lenses. They’re easier to take on and off as needed, and as far as I’m concerned, any excuse to accessorise works for me…

Judging the Simply Be plus size model competition

This week I left London for a couple of days and headed to Manchester for the long-awaited final of Simply Be‘s ‘Face Of Plus Size Fashion’ modelling competition. I was absolutely honoured to be asked to join Alison and Natalie from Simple Be, Jackie from Best Magazine and Sarah from 12+ UK Model Management as one of the judges, though I don’t think I realised until I got there just how difficult it was going to be to pick just one woman from the group of amazing ladies who made up the final 16!

The rules of the competition were left wide open, with no restrictions other than the fact you had to wear size 14+. The finalists (who’d been preselected by the team at Simply Be) were a really wide range of sizes, heights and ages, which I thought was fantastic. It was so wonderful to see women of all shapes and sizes looking gorgeous – and not shying away from fitted shapes, tricky trends and bold colours – but it also made choosing an eventual winner really difficult, because I loved so many of the girls for different reasons…

Label Love: Closet at Dorothy Perkins & Oli

A chat the other day with Amber reminded me that though I’d tweeted about them, I’d yet to write about my latest dress discovery – a gorgeous brand called Closet that’s stocked in some larger Dorothy Perkins stores, as well as on their website and Oli.co.uk. As a rule their dresses tend to be quite structured and fitted, with more than a little inspiration coming from a certain Mrs Beckham. And they give you a waist like you wouldn’t believe!

Though I’d never really considered myself a fan of Posh’s style, she does know how to make dresses that flatter curves (ironic, considering her severe lack of them), and Closet have taken a few of her more iconic designs, along with plenty of generic but very pretty nipped-waist, tulip skirted shapes, and whacked them out in everything from heart print to classic black. It’s not exactly envelope-pushing fashion ingenuity, but it is really easy to wear and universally flattering.

Tried & Tested: Jasmine Guinness ‘Queen of Hearts’ dress

I was recently invited by Very.co.uk to try an item of clothing from their website. I knew there’d be no problem finding something – with Holly Willougby’s curve-friendly collection and plenty of stylish stuff in the Love Label range, the most difficult thing was actually narrowing it down. I eventually decided to go for something a bit special from vintage fiend Jasmine Guinness, and picked her ‘Queen of Hearts’ dress, a 50s style number with a cute heart-print peekaboo hemline that was very Alice in Wonderland…

On size 14 as the ‘ideal’ and other revolutionary ideas…

Earlier this week the Daily Mail published an article about our new Equalities Minister, Lynne Featherstone. She made some comments over the weekend about the media’s portrayal of women, the ridiculous ideals that young women have to live up to, and the amount of tiny, airbrushed models we see in publications every day. She even suggested some kind of kitemark system for images that have been digitally altered. “Advertisers and magazine editors have a right to publish what they choose, but women and girls also have a right to feel comfortable in their own bodies.” She said.

So far, so good. But she then suggested that girls would be better to aspire to the curvaceous figure of my current girl crush, Christina Hendricks, rather than the impossibly thin models on the catwalk. “Christina Hendricks is absolutely fabulous. We need more of these role models.”

This, of course, led the Mail run with the shock headline “All women should aspire for hourglass size 14 figures, claims new equalities minister.” Talk about paraphrasing…

Tried & Tested: Gok Wan ‘Curve Controller’

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of shapewear. I love the 1950s nipped-waist silhouette and wear a lot of wiggle dresses that benefit from a good foundation (and no VPL). That said, I see shapewear as a smoothing, shaping garment, not a miracle fix. I don’t really subscribe to the whole ‘magic pants will make you thin’ idea – this is about creating a shape with the curves you have, not making them disappear completely!

In the past I’ve tried – and been impressed with – pieces from the previous Gok Wan collection for Simply Yours. I was recently offered the chance to try something from the new range, and I jumped at the chance to see what they’d done to improve it.