TBS Crew never stops: our London Fashion Week diary

Have you ever tried to load a Bentley with the luggage of three women caught between two fashion weeks? I know what you’re going to say: that is basically impossible. Well… You’re right. Almost. Andy, our driver for our three-day London Fashion Week, actually managed to do it: his remarkable Tetris-playing skills saved us a nervous breakdown when we landed in London from New York, after a 7-hour flight. That completely set the tone for our entire weekend in London, which was packed with surprises! The surprises started with our room, a family room at the May Fair Hotel with two – TWO! – bathrooms. Do you know what having two bathrooms can do for two women — Laura and me, to be specific — who need to get ready at the same time, for the same event? We can tell you: it means intense joy and no wasted time. Two bathrooms are the basis for peaceful coexistence, trust us on that! Especially if neither of the two persons who are sharing a space aren’t exactly the embodiment of tidiness or punctuality 😉

A smart driver with an incomprehensible accent, a beautiful car and a central hotel that welcomed us beautifully, even lending us a portable battery for our phones: all this made an excellent starting point for our very own London Fashion Week. We started with RED Valentino‘s event in the new Sloane Street boutique, where the brand was presenting his capsule, in collaboration with knitting artist London Kaye. We celebrated with them by having dinner in a private pub which can be easily described as paradise for interior design fans: not one single centimeter of the place is left empty of furniture or decoration, all in breathtaking bohemian and liberty styles. The only downside to this location was that it forbade cameras, so we couldn’t post any selfies on Instagram, so sad!

The following day we split up: some of us went to fashion shows, others to Camden to shop — Vale and Laura found awesome bargains there!! — and presentations. Charlotte Olympia gifted us with one of the most fun moments of the fashion week, organizing a show with live music by Brazilian super star Bebel Gilberto, dancers in glitter bikinis, and models dressed in fruit: all very fitting with the party’s theme which was, Let’s Go Bananas! The show also featured revisited version of cocktails, like the phenomenal passion fruit spritz — as well as champagne popsicles and blow-up bananas. It was great, basically! We had dinner at Novikov: that was a restaurant tip we got from a friend of Vale’s, and we loved it! The fusion menu was excellent, and the atmosphere very chill, we noted down the name for next time!

Monday was our last day in London and we wrapped it up in the best way possible, with Burberry’s show. Burberry organized a unique show in an astounding location: the Makers House is a sort of creative lab that brings together typically British artisans from many fields, showing their work in an Elizabethan setting. The times of Elizabeth I were inspiration for Bailey’s collection, which also paid homage to Virgina Woolf’s Orlando, as we realized upon receiving a wonderful copy of the book when attending the show. The show was followed by another magical surprise: the orchestra that played music during the show started playing again, giving us goosebumps and lots of IG stories to store on our phone forever. The icing on the cake was being given the chance of having a calligrapher personalize our book copies with Virginia Woolf quotes, having them handwritten with typical calligraphy of the writer’s time.
After a show like this, we decided to take a moment for ourselves, to wrap up London Fashion Week with a toast, and get ready for Fashion Week in Milan, which is starting soon. We decided to have dinner at May Fair Kitchen, our hotel’s restaurant. We had their tapas menu, featuring revisited Italian-style tapas that we really enjoyed. After that we just had a little bit of time for a drink at the May Fair Bar, which we loved not just for its cocktails but also for its beautiful 1960s-style couches, and then went straight to bed. Another fashion week was over.

Milan, here we come!