Visiting Pure London

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend Pure London at Olympia, a business to business tradeshow mainly for fashion buyers looking to find new brands to stock in their stores/boutiques. As a Fashion Marketing student it was interesting to go and observe the event to gain more insight into what happens there. Prepare yourself for a lot of photos...

I thought the event would be quite crowded but in reality it was clean, airy, and spacious. There was enough room to walk around with ease and light from the windows on the ceiling made the area look much brighter which allowed products to be seen clearly. Each brand had it's own stall and the amazing visual merchandising in some of them made it look like it was just a mini store - one of my favourites was Lavish Alice, it would be great if they expanded from being an online retailer and had physical stores. I will definitely be making a purchase with the brand soon after seeing some of their products.

There was some incredible clothing being showcased on the day, it was like torture having to walk around and look at it all without being able to buy anything but I loved it nonetheless! It was nice to discover brands that I hadn't heard of before and as my lecturer instructed us to take anything we were given (business cards, goodie bags, etc) for our Fashion Promotion module I have many reminders to go online and check them all out. I collected so many magazines and more that my shoulder actually ached by the end of the day because the bag I was given got so heavy.

As well as walking around and browsing the different stands, I attended two different seminars. One was about social media as the new visual merchandising in which Emily Quinton provided photography tips for each social media platform and the other was with bloggers DisneyRollerGirl and My Bubba & Me about 5 ways that brands can work with bloggers and which are more preferred. I didn't get any photographs during those as I was too busy taking notes like a typical student but both were really informative and useful.

My favourite part of the day was attending the Womenswear Autumn/Winter 15 catwalk. This catwalk featured several different trends for A/W and sitting at the front gave me prime position to take photos - though I did learn how hard it is to snap images before the model moves out of frame. You definitely have to try to achieve a balance between watching and taking photos or else you miss things. Here are some of my favourite looks from the show - there was such a variety of different garments being displayed but I loved these the most:

At the end of the day a few friends and I couldn't resist heading to Zara on Kensington High Street before returning home as we all felt in the mood to shop and I picked up a dress that I may post about soon.

I really enjoyed spending the day at Pure and will hopefully return for the next event. I definitely recommend going if you're a fashion student as it's good to experience, especially if you're thinking of becoming a buyer.