The Curve Fashion Festival

The Curve Fashion Festival, is a brand new and unique fashion event, and is slated to become the largest plus size fashion festival in the UK.

 

Louise O'Reilly, Tess Holliday, Nicolette Mason
and Hayley Hasselhoff
Photo courtesy of The Curve Fashion Festival

 

Chilled out after a
lovely massage



With the beautiful Georgina
of 'Fuller Figure, Fuller Bust' 

Debuting on Saturday 26th September, in Manchester Central, the event welcomed some great fashion brands and top plus-size celebrities and was attended by over 1,000 people. Here's my personal take on the day:

I arrived at 11.30am and was welcomed with a gorgeous goodie bag full of lovely treats including a New Look Handbag, Boohoo gift card, Curv'i'licious gift card, Creighton hair products and Bee Good skincare. I made my way to the Fashion Hall and began my day with a lovely back, neck and shoulder massage from Allie at the Spa Parties stand. It was heaven!

With my very favourite plus size blogger, the truly
gorgeous Betty Pamper

 



Duly relaxed and ready to face the day, I met up with some of the plus size bloggers before heading to the swap stand! I traded three dresses and a jumpsuit for three new-to-me dresses and a top! I love a good swapsies!

With the perfectly gorgeous
Lisa Riley at the launch of her new
collection - 'Just Be You'

 


 

 
 Following my fellow plus size bloggers lead, I headed to the Figure 8 stand to meet the lovely Lisa Riley for the unveiling of her beautiful new clothing range 'Just Be You'. If you haven't seen it - you must get yourself along to http://www.figure8collection.co.uk/18_just-be-you for a look. 

 

I bought myself the simply divine 'Katie' dress from the new collection and will be writing a blog on my purchase really soon!

Lisa Riley and the plus size bloggers
Photo courtesy of The Curve Fashion Festival

 

Next it was time for the catwalk shows with key new looks on show from ASOS Curve, Elvi, New Look, Boohoo.com, Very So Fabulous, Studio 8, Miss Guided, Evans, Pink Clove, Monif C, Taking Shape, Elomi, Simply Be, Studio Untold and Tess Holliday. The collections were beautiful and I've certainly got lots of inspiration for my autumn/ winter 2015 wardrobe.

From the ASOS Curve
Catwalk show
photo courtesy of
The Curve Fashion
Festival

 

From the Elvi
catwalk show
photo courtesy of
The Curve Fashion
Festival

 

From the Miss Guided 
Catwalk show
photo courtesy of
The Curve Fashion
Festival

My only criticism of the catwalk shows was the lack of representation of the plus size community in terms of models. The models, provided by Hughes Models, were of course beautiful ladies and did an excellent job of showing off the collections. However the buzz I got from the ladies watching the shows was that they (and indeed I) would liked to have seen more variety in the size, shape and height of the models. We are a very diverse community and this was my only downside to the day.

Following the fashion shows, it was back to the hall for a spot more shopping!

During my shopping trip, I was fitted for a new Elomi bra by the lovely Lucy at the Mish stand (https://www.mish-online.co.uk/). I was one of the 80% of women wearing the wrong size - who knew?! I had a sport of window shopping at the Very and Elvi stands, and I then went on to buy some gorgeous dresses from the 'Scarlett & Jo' (separate blog on my purchases to follow soon!) and (yet another!) t-shirt from 'Nicky Rockets'.

Tess Holliday
Photo courtesy of The Curve Fashion
Festival

With Tess Holliday

I also spoke to the perfectly gorgeous Tess Holliday at her '#Eff Your Beauty Standards' stall. I am such a massive fan of this lady and it was an absolute pleasure to meet with such a genuinely lovely person.

I could think of no better way to round off my day at The Curve Fashion Festival than with a photo of my MBBC girls; the reigning Miss British Beauty Curve, Rebecca Argent and Ms British Beauty Curve, Kat Henry.

Rebecca, Me and Kat
#MBBC

I'm so proud to have been awarded my title of this years' 'Ms Congeniality' and I'm looking forward to entering again in 2016.

Ms Congeniality 2015

I was sad to have to leave early and miss out on the seminars with Lisa Riley, Nicolette Mason, Louise O'Reilly, Tess Holliday and Hayley Hasselhoff, that completed the days events. However it has given me an added incentive to start planning my day for the 2nd annual Curve Fashion Festival.

Roll on next year...