Vintage Beauty with Jarrolds

I do love it when local places hold events and launches!

One of the great things about blogging is an inbox full of fun events to go to, and the worst thing is that I can rarely go to them as they’re all in London and what for someone else is an event to “pop into” for half an hour, for me is 5 hour round trip and £70 worth of train fare. So when local places hold awesome events I get really excited!

The local place in this instance is Jarrold department store, in Norwich. They’re a bit of a local institution, with a history dating back to the 1770s and my go to location for tights, art supplies, fancy food from their deli at Christmas and fun beauty products.

Last week I was invited along to small vintage beauty evening in store with a few other bloggers, and I was so excited I forgot my camera, so you’ll have to make do with iPhone snaps, but still, that’s a step up from scanned disposable camera photos, so we’re moving on!

I do love a department store beauty department. Having so many luxury brands in one place feels like such a treat, and they’re far more relaxed to browse through than a Chemist. Jarrolds has a particularly good one as I think it stocks a nice range of classic brands that you don’t see everywhere like Penhaligons and Floris which can be considered old fashioned, but I think are “classic” and more modern quirky brands like Cowshed and Benefit.

The event started in the newly revamped Cafe Benji where we were given “fizz and nibbles”

These were no ordinary nibbles though, oh no, they were sharing platters from the new menu, all themed. The vegetarian option was set up like a garden with flower pots and terracotta snails, while the meat platter came with mini meat cleavers to chop things up.

The actual point of the evening wasn’t the food though (at least as far as Jarrolds was concerned, I might have been there for the food!) it was to give us lucky, lucky folk a vintage make over courtesy of Aveda, who did our hair, and the beauty department.

I sipped my fizz while watching others get their hair beautified, before it was my turn.

I have to say that Aveda products smell divine, so not only did I finish up with this gorgeous wave in my hair, but it also smelt lovely!

My hair was curled with straighteners, a technique I haven’t quite got the hang off properly, especially at the back of my head. This was done by taking vertical sections and curling them all in the same direction.

Next up was a vintage make over from the beauty department. I’d deliberately not worn a lot of make up, so my base and eyebrows were touched up and a gel eyeliner used to create flicks, and then I chose the yummiest deep YSL lipstick to finish off the look all available from the Jarrold beauty hall.

Sadly the only place I had to go after my glamorous make over was Tescos, but I think I brightened up peoples day by being so excessively glamorous while shopping for bread and milk.

Jarrolds also sent me home with a glamorous goodie box, containing some full size products from a new brand they are stocking on the beauty floor called The Vintage Cosmetic Company. I haven’t had chance to give them a try yet, but I have been making the most of the perfume samples and Aveda kindly gave us a little bag with some full size products in as well, which I have been making good use of!

Now all I have to do is work on making myself look as glamorous when I have somewhere to make the most of it!