Young Creative Entrepreneur Awards, or a lesson in punctuality

Bearing in mind that I live way out in suburbia, Saturday morning was a fairly early start. My lovely bf Mike decided he would escort me to today’s events but only if I would put him on the blog. Oh the vanity of the man! So here we are looking seriously happy about the journey ahead:

Looking at this photo, I’m not happy with my outfit. I thought that I looked kooky casual (Betsey Johnson style) but it turns out I look like a fat teenager. Ah well, we live and learn!

The awards presentation was due to start at 11.30 and we arrived at the Natural History Museum at 11.20. I had no idea that getting into the “big building” would be so hard! I had to queue to get my badge and then show it to 4 different members of security before I could get through. I arrived at the presentation at 11.30 sharp, just in time for it to start. As you can tell by my view, this was a big mistake:


Note to self, allow more time to get through security and always arrive at least 20 minutes before you thought you needed to! I could blame myself but I think I’ll blame all the cancellations on the underground instead.

The awards were for the UK Young Creative Entrepreneur of the Year and the International Young Creative Entrepreneur of the year. The winners were Simeon Hartwig from the UK and Oscar Lawalata from Indonesia. Simeon is a 5ft6” designer who started his company Bantum Clothing to produce street style clothing for smaller men like himself. Oscar has two boutiques and three labels; Oscar Lawalata Culture, Oscar Lawalata Couture, and Oscar Lawalata for uniforms. Despite my relative late arrival, I did manage to shuffle my way close enough to get a snap of the international winner with his award;
And here are some photos of the winners designs from the PR pack. The first two are by Oscars and the second two are by Simeon:
After this and a sneaky glass of champagne (at 11.30 in the morning! Imagine!) I decided to have a walk around the exhibitions. I felt incredibly star struck when I saw Hilary Alexander (who has an air of glamorous confidence surrounding her) rifling through some rails in the Topshop new generation area and being incredibly complimentary about some dresses. And then I saw Fred Butler, who I think is amazing, looking incredible next to a stand of her jewellery, looking stunning in a bright orange jumpsuit. I had to make myself walk away so I didn’t look like a stalker/loon.

I should’ve stayed where I was however, as with the next person I spoke to the conversation went like this:
Rude lady “Where did you get your scarf from?”
Me: “H&M”
Rude lady: “Oh, how much did it cost?”
Me: “£5.99, why do you ask?”
Rude lady: “You can tell” and then she turned and walked away.

Can you imagine?! I didn’t realise you had to be rude to people at these events or that H&M scarves were such a terrible thing…maybe I should have told her my shorts and t shirt were from primark too; that might’ve made her head explode!

Still: you can’t let one rude person ruin your good time, and I really did have an incredible morning, despite the fact that I couldn't really see much of what was going on during the awards ceremony.

More show reviews to follow…

Love Tor xx