Win a LUCZA Party Dress

New London label LUCZA launched in April 2011 & recently presented their 4th collection.  

The latest range sees a capsule collection of key pieces called ’The LUCZA Ten.’  These garments come in relaxed, chic forms, providing numerous style options and make outfit-assembly breezy.  They lend perfectly to multi-event outfits and can be worn day-to-night with minimal effort.

‘Wardrobe essentials that epitomise contemporary elegance and truly effortless chic. With simple silhouettes, luxurious fabrics and refined colour palettes, the collection forms the basis of the modern woman’s wardrobe.’

LUCZA are given you a chance to win one of their signature dresses during their December Pinterest Competition:

To enter the competition, you will  need to create a Pinterest board called ‘LUCZA’s Party-Perfect LBD’ and style either the Vanessa or Caroline dress with three or more accessories of your choice.

Once happy with your outfit, tweet your board to@LUCZA_LONDON using the hashtag #luczaLBD, or post a link to LUCZA’s facebook wall. The lucky winner will receive either a LUCZA Vanessa Dress worth £280 or a LUCZA Caroline Dress worth £320 as their prize – both timeless, versatile and effortlessly chic pieces for the festive party season.

The competition closes on Wednesday 19th December, and the winner will be the individual with the most stylish outfit as judged by the LUCZA panel.

More information about the competition can be found on their website: 

http://www.lucza.com/lucza-loves/2012/12/win-a-party-perfect-lbd-from-the-lucza-collection/

The Empowerment Challenge // Nudie Jeans X Amnesty International

What does the word ‘Empowerment’ mean to you?  Is it listening to your favourite Beyoncé track for musical dutch courage before a date? Is ‘empowerment’ the feeling you got when you drove your first car?  Or does it mean something more?  Perhaps taking control of your life and claiming your basic human rights?  Throughout history there are eras where people were empowered to fight for what were essentially basic human rights.  The Suffragettes, the Civil Rights Movement…even now the News at 10 is littered with images of oppressed people fighting to live fairer and freer lives for themselves and others.  And thank goodness for organisations like Amnesty International who for the last fifty years have been at the forefront fighting alongside the oppressed and highlighting their plight on an international platform.

This year Amnesty International has teamed up with the achingly hip denim label, Nudie Jeans, to challenge everyone to try their hand at becoming a t-shirt Print Designer.  Now, before you dismiss this idea as being a tad too frivolous, just think of how powerful a T-shirt can be.  That is to say, what presidential campaign doesn’t come with a t-shirt?  I must say, I was hankering after a Obama one myself.  And how many of you have owned a Che Guevara Tee in your time?  Without even words, a print on a Tee can translate a meaning across infinite languages.  Therefore, why not have a crack at producing a motif, a print, a pattern, or even something more abstract.  Your only guideline is that your inspiration is the word ‘Empowerment’.  With this competition running from now until 30th April, full details can be found here at the Nudie Jeans website.  You not only could win 1000 euros, but also have your design launched in store come November, with 10 euros for every tee sold going back to Amnesty International.  So why not take up the Empowerment challenge?  You may even one day be in league with the ‘Che’.

Announcing our brilliant beauty goodie bag giveaway

Listen up, we’re pretty excited about this – it’s the first ever Style & Then Some giveaway competition.

Busy little bloggers that we are, gadding about town hopping from press days to blogger events to product launches, team Style & Then Some realised recently that we’ve amassed A LOT of  beauty goodies.  I’m talking hair products, make up, skincare stuff, you name it. And really good brands too – check out just a few in the photo above.

So we thought it’d be nice to offer a couple of our lovely readers a chance to win a big goodie bag each stuffed with these brilliant beauty products. Isn’t that selfless of us? Well, not entirely, because in return we’d like you to help us spread the word about your favourite blog (that’s us, of course) and encourage you to come to our next tweet up on 12th January.

Here’s how it works:

We’ve got two big bags full of beauty goodies that you can have a chance of winning, either by sharing this blog post via social media or entering a prize draw at the tweet up.

1. HOW TO ENTER ONLINE

On Facebook, click here to like the Style & Then Some page OR if you already like us then click here and like this post on our Facebook page.

OR

On Twitter, click here to follow Style & Then Some then tweet this post using the little blue tweet box at the bottom of the page. If you already follow us, just tweet this post and you’ll be automatically entered.

2. HOW TO ENTER AT THE TWEET UP

Come to our tweet up at Vodka Revolution in Soho on 12th January 2011. All details can be found here. It’ll be a classic numbers in a box raffle system. Grab a ticket on arrival and at the end of the night we’ll draw the winner of the goodie bag.

The competition is open from now until midnight on 12th Janaury 2011. After the closing date we’ll pick one winning entry at random.

Good luck!

My day as an online writer at Stylist magazine

You might have heard that I won a competition as part of Stylist magazine’s 100^th issue last week (mainly because I didn’t stop tweeting, blogging and generally yapping about it). I sent in my entry, a list of the top ten funniest fictional Twitter accounts, and was picked to go and write for the magazine’s website for a day. Here’s how I got on.

I arrived at Emerald Street (you’ll recognise that name if you subscribe to Stylist’s mailing list) in Holborn at 9.30am and met fellow competition winner Stacey. We were going to be spending the day together so I was relieved to find she was really friendly and chatty. Online Editor Stephanie Wood came and collected us from reception and took us up to where the website team sit, on the floor above the print magazine folk. She got us started on our first task: scouring news sites and blogs to find interesting stories for the website.

Within a couple of hours I had my first article online. Steph had told me by email the week before that it’d be a good idea to have a look at news online before I came in, so, massive nerd that I am, I spent the whole of the night before (and even got up extra early that day) on sites like the Huffington Post and The Cut blog. I ended up writing a celebrity news story on Zooey Deschanel’s divorce and another piece about adorably funny new Tumblr blog ‘Fashimals’ which I’d read about the night before. Lesson learned: it pays to be prepared.

After a quick guide to their CMS (Content Management System – the software used to upload content to the website) and a crash course in Photoshop from Lauren, another girl in the web team, our stories were up (Stacey wrote about the new Government pledge to fight sexual violence) and we went off for lunch. This was a great chance to ask Steph all about Stylist and what it’s like to run the website. It actually didn’t seem a whole lot different to running Style and Then Some, except on a much, much larger scale of course. A lot of the main concerns were the same, like getting quality, timely articles up every day, trying to increase viewing stats and followers, boosting Search Engine Optimisation and getting your content spread via social media and other channels. For instance, in August, a Stylist online article on the 100 best opening lines from books was picked up by the Huffington Post and that pushed the viewing stats through the roof that month. I told Steph that I’d quickly become obsessed with checking the viewing stats of my blog and she agreed it’s highly addictive – she even has an iPhone app so she can monitor the stats remotely.

Me and Stacey (right) the other online writer competition winner

Back in the office Stacey and I were put to work on a ‘life in pictures’ gallery focusing on Marilyn Monroe, to tie in with forthcoming film My Week with Marilyn, in which Michelle Williams plays the iconic blonde. With the aid of Rex features and Wikipedia we compiled photos and captions to represent the significant moments in Monroe’s career and personal life. Steph explained that using the gallery format helps with SEO (because it means the keywords are repeated on every picture in the gallery) and increases the number of page impressions, which is crucial for attracting advertisers. We beavered away until 7pm but didn’t have time to complete the gallery – hopefully it will be published soon, as will our original competition entry top ten lists.

All in all, I had a great time at Stylist. Steph and the team were all really lovely and so accommodating; I learnt loads in just one day and it was brilliant that Stacey and I were allowed to get really hands on with the website. Other competition winners may have had their work published in the Made by You issue of the magazine, but I really think we got the best prize – but then I guess I would say that.

Check out the two stories I wrote on Stylist.co.uk:

Zooey Deschanel splits with husband

Meet the Fashimals

Wish me luck, I’m off to Stylist magazine for a day

More exciting news for team Style & Then Some this week (following our feature on the Telegraph website last week) – I won a competition as part of Stylist magazine’s Made by you issue and I get to go and write for their website for a day. To celebrate the magazine’s 100th edition, virtually everything in the magazine that comes out on Wednesday 2 November will be produced by readers and they held a bunch of competitions to find writers, stylists, illustrators and designers for the issue.

For the online writer competition I had to write a top ten list like the ones they feature on the Stylist website. I chose a top ten of the funniest fictional Twitter accounts, featuring sample tweets from people like @Queen_UK. I also added to the email a list of five reasons that I thought they should pick me, so maybe that helped me stand out from the crowd. But it was still a huge surprise when Stephanie Wood,  Assistant Editor (Online), called me on Friday morning to say I was one of the two winners along with a girl called Stacey, who tweeted me later that day. Luckily, I recently reduced my hours at work to four days a week and my boss was happy to let me swap my non working day to Wednesday (she’s really supportive about my ‘extra curricular activities’ and was really pleased that I won). So I’ve got the all clear for my day at Stylist HQ and I can’t wait!

Stephanie says that I’ll be helping to write news stories in the morning and compiling photo galleries and lists in the afternoon. I’m really looking forward to seeing how a magazine production team works on a day to day basis, and getting some online writing tips from the pros. I’m also hoping I don’t make any major office faux-pas or somehow cause the entire website to crash. You can find out if that does happen by going to www.stylist.co.uk on Wednesday, and don’t forget to check back here later in the week when I’ll blog about how I got on.

Read about the Stylist ‘Made by you’ 100th issue.

Make wool cool and win a trip to Australia

Now, I realise it’s summer over here in the UK and all you want to think about wearing are denim shorts and playsuits, but a little bit of styling effort with your favourite wool garments on the Fashion by Feelings website could nab you a trip to the Australia, where it’s well on the way to winter.

Launched by Aussie wool promoters Woolmark as part of the We Love Wool campaign, Fashion by Feelings invites you to upload a photo of a look associated with one of twelve feelings – like cute, seductive, powerful or natural. It’s a lot like every wannabe street style photographers favourite website, Lookbook.nu, but the crucial criteria here is that every look has to involve wool in one way or another.

The look that gets the most ‘loves’ by the end of September 2011 will win the grand prize, which includes return flights to Sydney for two people, six nights accommodation, a wool shopping spree worth AUD $3,600, a pair of EMU boots each and a visit to a Merino wool farm. Even if you don’t want to post a look yourself, all voters will be entered into a weekly draw to win a wool prize pack from EMU Australia worth AUD $400.

I went to Australia in April this year (and blogged about this great fashion exhibition I saw in Melbourne) but I wouldn’t mind another trip out there, so I’m off to think up a wooltastic outift that I can upload. So far I’m thinking it’s going to involve a classic navy vintage Lyle and Scott jumper styled up all nautical. Good luck if you decide to have a go too.

Visit the Fashion by Feelings website to upload your look and vote for your favourites. Look out for iPhone and iPad apps coming in August.