By Invitation Only

Over the past couple months I have been reading a book written by the two founders of Gilt Groupe, an online sample sale website which was created in 2007. The group was dreamt up by two women, Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, who changed that dream into reality and in 2013 the group was valued at more than $1 billion, a huge success story for a website which has changed the way many shop.
The book is great for a young women like me, looking up to two inspirations who believed in their concept and pushed it right into the forefront of womens' minds in America. They blended their personal strengths, weaknesses and skills together to create an expert team in the fashion and online world, and carried the group through the dark days of the recession to become even stronger.
It showed me how in the very beginnings of business, dark and damp offices crammed with a few people emailing potential customers all day long is now much a reality of start up businesses but working hard and striving for better will always push the company out the other side onto bigger and better things. The importance of networking was key for Gilt Groupe with Alexis Maybank using her contacts to entice designers to sell their products on the website to a mass appeal of customers.

Having to come up with a business concept in the coming months for my final project this book was a fantastic and inspirational read of two women who have started from humble beginnings and conquered the fashion and business world through excellent working relationships and drive to succeed, and of course a great idea in the first place. This book has taught me many things that I will be taking on into my future work and career as well as exposing me to more key women in the industry who are a new inspiration for me.

Image: Authors Own

Afternoon Tea at The Berkeley

As a late birthday present, yesterday I took a trip down to London to visit my sister and spend the afternoon at Berkeley Tea Rooms. Not just your average afternoon tea, Berkeley in Knightsbridge pride themselves on offering something slightly different. They base their afternoon tea on the lastest fashion collections, so during the time we visited all the treats were inspired by the Spring/Summer 2013 season, helping to relive summer just that little bit longer.

Starting with a glass of champagne and a few sandwiches to ease you in, my sister and I were looking forward to seeing what our tower of treats would hold. Our waiter brought out a gorgeous china 3 plate tower laden with cakes and treats. Biscuits based on Manolo Blahniks, a cake sandwich in the shape of Jason Wu's leopard print bag and honeycomb cream and marsipan taking inspiration from Alexander McQueen were among many others.

The effort and construction taken to create and execute each piece to perfection was stunning, you felt so much enthusiasm had gone into each little treat that was gone in seconds. Gorgeous colours popped from the plates complementing our beautiful china tea set made the day so special and quirky. Better still, they replace the plates as you finish with another set of treats and let you take home anything you haven’t finished, now you can't complain about that.

The thought of taking such a traditional past time and recreating it for the modern day and to appeal to the expanding numbers of fashionista's there are in the world today is a great concept. I would recommend this experience to anyone who may be after something a little bit special and memorable to enjoy during an afternoon in London. 

Images: Authors Own