LRFS Fashion Show!

Hello! So firstly I am so sorry that this has taken me so long to publish, the LRFS (Leeds Rag Fashion Show) was a few weeks ago now but I guess sometimes blogging can be super hectic and this month it really has been. In February I attended London Fashion Week and whilst that was incredible and really did set the bar high, it was very exciting to be invited to a local fashion show, with all proceeds going to charity. I am extremely impressed with what I saw, students tend to get slated quite a lot in the media so it was incredible to see a team of intelligent students pull off such a smooth running, professional evening... get comfy, you've got VIP seats to the show...

The show was held at the Leeds University Union and the union was transformed, there was a cocktail bar, a VIP lounge and more. I loved the little details like the flowers in the pots hanging from trees.

It would have been really nice to go to the event with a few of my girlie friends and have some cocktails together, I was envious of all the groups of girls dressed up enjoying a girls night out. Next time I will definitely be forcing my friends to buy tickets, the only reason they didn't this year is because most of my uni friends said that they hadn't heard much about the show until quite late on this year. There were lots of groups of girls there and everyone looked amazing, I felt ill and wasn't with any of my friends so I did feel a little bit of of place, instead I just got my camera out and searched the room for anyone that I knew... (I hate going to events by myself) but I was soon rescued when I found the other press/blogger members and we grabbed a cocktail or three together and finally I relaxed a little bit.

Red Bull supplied the music in the VIP lounge (and I'm sure they probably supplied some Red Bull too) but I was slow off the mark and missed that, they also supplied an amazing photo booth, I love photo booths but because I didn't feel very well I looked horrendous on all the photos! Boo!

Another lovely, girlie finishing touch, the 'grab and share some sweets for the show' sign. I unfortunately missed out on the sweets because I was too late but I thought this was such a lovely touch, top marks to whoever came up with this idea. 

I was handed my VIP pass and escorted to my seat by one of the lovely organisers, Lucinda. I was too nervous to attend the show by myself so actually went upstairs to the RAG office before hand to meet Lucinda. Lucinda is head of social media and what a brilliant job she did, I watched her frantically tweeting and facebooking away - I'm not sure how she still managed to enjoy her night whilst she was live blogging/tweeting and status updating from such a hectic event but she did it all with a smile and is a real credit to the RAG team.

Above you can see Lucinda snapping away - she actually has a blog of her own which you can read here and I'd love for you all to give it a look as she really did look after me on the evening of the fashion show. So before I start, I just want to tell you a little bit about RAG, Leeds RAG (raise and give) is a student led and student-orientated society which works all year to fundraise a large amount of money for a variety of local, national and international charitable causes whilst providing students with exciting experiences. It's a great society and something I really wanted to join this year but unfortunately due to time restraints (I literally never have any free time) I never got the chance to join. This years RAG fashion show was raising funds for SARSVL: support after rape and sexual violence Leeds, a cause which is very close to my heart and a charity which I 100% support and SUDEP, Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy - another incredible charity. I am really glad that these were the two chosen charities. The show started with a brilliant speech about both of the charities and a discussion about what they do for people, it really was a tear jerker but it made everyone in the audience realise that we were all there for the same reason, to raise money and awareness for two incredible causes.

The fashion show soon kicked off and here are just a few of my favourite looks

I absolutely love the make up for the look above

The models were students, it was absolutely incredible to see how professional they were at walking the catwalk. The girl above was one of my favourites, she is absolutely stunning.

I loved this outfit, if only it was acceptable to wear this in public...

There was an interval in the middle of the show where we could take part in a raffle (I love raffles so bought a few lines) and a secret auction - with some amazing prizes. Before the interval, RAG showcased some of the University's finest dancing talent. We saw lots of American Apparel outfits throughout the show and I've just noticed that these dancers are wearing American Apparel dresses too, I've become obsessed with A.A recently. 

The show continued after a little break.

This coat got me very excited for going to Canada, I'm gonna need one - uh oh!

Lucinda was live tweeting every outfit and where they were from. I'm sorry that there are no photos of what I was wearing in the evening but I really wasn't feeling well and unfortunately wasn't up to taking any outfit photos - I will make it up to you, I promise.

It's safe to say that some of these outfits got me extremely excited for Summer.

I love this playsuit from Accent Clothing.

Throughout the show we saw some pretty epic heels too.

Some pretty epic hair was also seen.

And I couldn't get enough of this dress, and these wedges. Yum.

At the end of the show they drew the raffle, I obviously bought a few tickets because I wanted to give something to the charities, I didn't win but just as I was saying bye to everyone and leaving, I heard my name, it turns out I won an iPad mini for the 'best selfie'! Rock, Pamper, Scissors were one of the main sponsors of the show, they're an online booking system for beauty appointments (I need to check them out) and throughout, they ran a competition where you had to send them a selfie, the best one would win an iPad, I never thought I'd win but here are my selfies below:

First I entered with the above selfie, I thought it was pretty good but quite tame.

Then I really went for it and decided to be creative and make a collage, clearly they liked it because they crowned me the winner! This suddenly made my stomach ache go away for a few minutes and really did take me by surprise, I couldn't believe it. Thank you so much Rock, Pamper, Scissors, you made me one very happy girl.

On our seats were these big American Apparel bags filled with goodies, unfortunately mine didn't actually have any American Apparel goodies in it, but I could hardly complain, look at what was in it...

I ate the choc dip immediately (my favourite) and my boyfriend has stolen all of the dry shampoo - boys ey. Thank you to the RAG team for an incredibly professional night, the outfits, make up and models were all amazing and the organisation from the team clearly paid off because everything ran smoothly. After being on the front row at London Fashion Week, I thought that would be hard to beat, but I am extremely proud that students at my University pulled off such a large, professional event (and they all looked fabulous too). I'd also like to say one last thanks to Lucinda, she worked so hard with the bloggers and the social media side of everything, it's lovely to see such a hard working person. 

Have you ever heard of RAG? Have you ever been to a student-run fashion show? Do you like any of these outfits?

Lots of love, Em x

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