Billion Dollar Babes in London

Last Saturday, I woke up bright and early at *gasps* 7am to go to Billion Dollar Babes. To those of you who don't know what Billion Dollar Babes is, it's a sample sale. Now normally, I'm not one to go get crushed by a mad crowd of crazy bargain shopping hopefuls, but since the Vogue website kept on mentioning it, I decided to check out the Babes website and was very impressed. The list of brands the sample sale carried was quite alluring -Catherine Malandrino, Diane Von Furstenberg, Cacherel, Joes Jeans, Missoni handbags and Philip Tracey, just to name a few.

Billion Dollar Babes actually first started in America and became big in New York and LA. Then this June, Babes had its first overseas sale in London. I was busy in June so didn't manage to make it, but I was so glad I went to this one! When I arrived at eightish, it was already crazy packed. Shoppers were all frantically going through clothing racks, taking things to try on. There were also jewellery stalls such as funky jewellery brand Mawi and beautiful jewellery label Carolina Bucci for the accessories-lovers. Women around were all trying on shoes, jewellery, hats and bags.

Completely soaking up the fantastic shopping atmosphere around me, I got into my serious shopping mood and got to work. First I went through the racks of clothing and tried them on. The changing room is not like normal changing rooms in shops -it's simply one big room with mirrors in it. It's no time to be shy and find a hidden corner to change. But I actually quite liked it because you can actually ask the woman next to you what they think, or like when I helped the woman next to me pull up the zippers at the back of her dress. At the end, I decided to buy an Ella Moss long sleeve top (£35) and a beads-embellished Pink Soda halter top (£15). Definitely much cheaper than they would usually cost!

After the clothes, I walked around the accessories stalls and found a really pretty embellished pink scarf at the Pink Soda stall for £15. But my happiest moment there was when I found this pair of Georgina Goodman flats:

These Georgina Goodman shoes are called Kizzy. Originally £320, I got them for £62! They're actually made of snake skin and the bronze fabric really adds style to the flats. OK, so they're from the SS05 collection, but I figured I could totally wear them next summer too, esp with so much white seen in the SS06 catwalks. As the Georgina Goodman website describes them: "never out of season, always to be worn, forever young and utterly gorgeous"!

Before I left, I went to their refreshment stall to get a complimentary bottle of Perrier, (they also offered Diet Coke.) What an amazingly spirit lifting sample sale!