Posted: by Rhian Tuesday, 18 October 2016 @ 10:00
We were lucky enough to go along to Stylist live, a fabulous event with inspirational workshops and speakers and of course, shopping! If you didn’t get down, we highly recommend booking up next year, so for those of you who missed out, here are our highlights.
Rhian’s highlight
Caitlin Moran and Sali Hughes on female friendships
I am a huge Caitlin Moran fan, so I was definitely fan girling pretty hard at this one. Friends for years, Caitlin and Sali welcomed us in to one of their ‘quarterly meetings’ an event they organise throughout the year with their girlfriends, we love the importance they placed on this quality time together and we particularly love the fact they set an agenda. Some of their favourite discussions were around the rise and fall of Marks and Spencers, the perfect pair of tights, and a phrase we’re loving ‘where are their girls’. This is something they refer to when a celebrity is acting out, acting up or making some seriously dodgy decisions publicly, they pointed out that everyone should have their girls around them, to steal their phone or shoes and utter those lifesaving words, ‘maybe we should all go to bed now’ and stopping you from doing something you’ll seriously regret. Top of their ‘where are their girls’ list – Donald Trump obviously!
Sinade’s highlight
How to find happiness every day
Sinade went to listen to Rachel Le Feuvre, owner of ‘The Reset Button’ talk about her business, mindful retreats to refresh your mind and body. Rachel pointed out that actually happiness doesn’t come naturally to us; due to survival instincts, we’re naturally preparing for and fearing the worst, therefore it’s perfectly normal to have to re-wire your brain to be happy. She came away feeling much more positive about the fact that sometimes we have to work on being happy, because it’s completely natural.
Jo’s highlights
Jo Malone
Jo Malone’s talk was truly inspirational, as she answered questions about her original, eponymous business, ‘Jo Malone’, which she sold to Estee Lauder some years ago; and her new, more personal, venture, ‘Jo Loves’. It was fascinating to hear about all the hard work that went into the huge success of the ‘Jo Malone’ brand, and the key stand-out moments that helped turn it into a multi-million pound brand, such as Jo’s appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show. But also, really interesting to see how humble Jo still is, with high hopes for her new venture, but no arrogance or over-confidence about how successful it may or may not become.
Glass Walls at Work
The talk on ‘Glass Walls’ at work, by Sue Unerman and Kathryn Jacobs, was equally fascinating, although also very depressing. From a headline figure of 26% of Footsie companies having women on their Board – to this actually turning out to be 9%, when you discount the non-executive directors who aren’t actually employed full-time; to the wealth of sexism that women still face in business today, it showed how much more there is to do to build true equality in the workplace. It also highlighted some more light-hearted ways for women to score quick wins in male environments – such as using footballing analogies to explain things to men; and learning some put-downs to use as office banter when faced with a roomful of men!
And as for the shopping, here are some of the brands we loved…
Both myself and Jo came away with a couple of beautiful coasters for our bedrooms. I went for big spoon and little spoon – awwwww!
Sinade treated herself to a gorgeous make up bag personalised
with her name!
And we were all seriously lusting after these fab neon signs, they’d
look great with our jewellery!
Were you there? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section...