What to wear to a fancy dinner or date

I may be a fashion blogger, but I always struggle with my outfit when it comes to going out for a fancy dinner. I’m more for semi-casual outfits, and sometimes when squeezing into a dress I don’t feel very comfortable – especially not when out for a big meal! So when the lovely people from Blue Banana offered to send me a piece of clothing of my choice I was absolutely thrilled!

Blue Banana is more of an alternative emo, rock and hipster shop, but they still cater for other styles as well. The dress I decided on is a lovely black layered dress in a sheer material with cut out details. It’s tight at the top, but nice and flowy in the skirt – so plenty of space to eat a big dinner without it showing ;)

It’s a firm fabric with no stretch in it, so the dress has a zipper on the right side. With it being so many layers I found it a bit tricky to find my way into this dress, but once it was on it was absolutely worth the effort! Don’t you think I look a bit witch-like in it? I love it!

I’ve matched the dress with black tights, my new black leather platform stilettos with velvet laces from Deichmann (a lot more comfortable than they look!), and some pearls to create a bit of a contrast to all the black.

The pearl necklace is from Primark, and the pearl earrings are from New Look.

Monochrome OOTD + £80 ATOP watch GIVEAWAY

I'm going for the monochrome look today. I love a completely black and white outfit - it looks kind of dramatic! But the reason I'm dressed like this today is because of this bright white watch. It was my sole inspiration for this outfit.

The sugar skull top and the waist belt is from H&M, and the casual blazer with a leather collar is from Republic.

I recently received this cool watch as a blogger gift from ATOP timezone watches. Just like it sounds, you can tell the time from all over the world with this watch. You simply turn the rim of the watch and set it to a specific city, and when you do so the time changes. The little sun and moon symbol to the left also tells you if the local time in the place the watch is set to is in the day or in the night. Such a clever idea! Especially if you have family and friends in other countries, or if you're on holiday.

The watch is made of metal, with the material of the arm band being rubber. It's a unisex watch so it looks just as good on men as on women. It's super versatile as well, and goes with most styles. 

I chose the white one as I thought it was the colour that's the easiest to match with my clothes. It comes in a range of different colours though, as you can see in the image below.
And do you know what the best part is...? 

ATOP timezone watches has agreed to GIVE AWAY one of their amazing watches to one of my lucky readers as well!

The lucky winner gets to choose whichever of these watches from the ATOP worldtime watches VWA collection, worth £80. What colour do you have your heart set on?

To be in it for a chance of winning this watch, simply enter via the Rafflecopter widget below.
The more entry options you do - the higher the chance to win.

This giveaway is open to EU residents only.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Win competitions at ThePrizeFinder.com

1970s inspired patterned dress

You won’t believe what I paid for this dress!

And I kind of don’t want to tell you…

But I will!

But I’ll start by saying… Primark is underrated!

A couple of weeks ago I went into Primark to pick up some little bits and bobs, and walked past this dress. I had not planned to invest in any bigger purchases on this day, so I was a bit reluctant when I saw the price tag that said £10. Don’t get me wrong, £10 is cheap anyway, but I don’t like spending my money without having planned to do so.

I stood there for a while with the dress in my hands, just because I absolutely loved the orange and red colours against the black background. So 1970’s!

I then noticed a little scribble on the price tag saying £7… then another one further down saying £3. Hell yeah, I thought!

Although, when I took it to the checkout to pay, the price that popped up on the display was £1. One single pound! I couldn’t believe it! I kind of felt like I was stealing this dress…

This must be the best purchase in a long time. I absolutely love the look of this dress, and how it sits. With it being so cheap you might have thought that it would simply fall apart due to poor quality… but nope! I feel like such a 70’s girl in this dress, and I absolutely adore the pattern and the faux leather sleeves. This caused lots of positive comments at work as well, which is always appreciated.

I think it’s really important to match your makeup with your clothes - it just adds that perfect finishing touch to a look - so I applied some red lipstick and bronze and black smoky eye makeup.

It’s quite funny that the dress is a perfect match to my tattoo as well! :)

I dug out this necklace below for this outfit as well, seeing as it has the exact same colours as the dress. The necklace is made of coloured pieces of glass that have been melted together, and is designed by a Swedish artist.

To make the outfit even more 70’s inspired I decided to wear my tan faux leather platform shoes with a wooden heel (very Jeffrey Campbell inspired, but unfortunately they’re fake).

What do you think of my Primark bargain?