Summer Coats | Summer | Fashion

Hey! So this is another post about coats for summer but given the UK climate, it's always essential to have a light feel but rain and cold proof coat and so that's what I'm recommending today! A lot of these are quite similar but it's always good to have choices and I just love these styles so I couldn't resist!

# 1 - From New Look, this first one is a gorgeous stone colour and priced at £49.99. Quite simply, I just love the light, fresh colour of this coat which will protect you from freezing to death but isn't a winter coat that you'll have to wear just because it's raining. The belted aspect of this means that it can adjust at the waist and is a really current look. The buttons are a lovely brown colour which compliments the stone well and the pixie collared neck gives a smart, sharp look overall.

# 2 - This one is a lot more expensive than the last but I have completely fallen for it! This gorgeous navy trench coat comes from River Island and is priced at £85 but is sure to keep you looking stylish and dry, especially as it is knee length! Like the last one, it's belted and so adjustable to your waist size too. Plus it has really nice shiny buttons that I love.

# 3 - I do have to apologize for the quality of the picture on this next one unfortunately. However, the link is right here so please do check it out. It's priced at £40 from Missguided and is a really light grey checked colour. I think this is just perfect for a drizzly day as the colour isn't too dark that you think you're in the middle of winter but will also keep you warm and dry. The colours, as well, are really good for an office environment which can often be tricky to dress for in the summer so this coat matches this really well. Deliberately oversized, this coat is right on trend and reduced in price at the moment!

# 4 - This coat has a slightly different feel from the rest of the coats I picked out but I thought it was great for a more casual, shabby chic look. It's priced at £30 from Forever 21 and promises a snug and warm fitting coat, massive pockets for all your bits and bobs and a drawstring around the waist to tighten as you wish!

# 5 -  Anyone who knows me well knows that I just love the range from George at Asda and so I couldn't do a post without featuring a coat that's fairly priced and ideal for British Summertime! Here, we have a light coloured mac coat with a light feel fabric and sharp edged look. This kind of look will ensure that you look fresh and current in any weather without looking like you just wandered out of December. The belt and fabric ensure a comfortable fit which will suit your needs while keeping you a little warmer when needed!

# 6 - I am cheating slightly with this next one as it is technically classed as a blazer on the River Island website but I think it would be great for most weathers so long as you remember your umbrella! The light pink shade gives a fresh, spring/summer feel and will compliment most summer outfits this season. The fabric should also keep you cool as well as ensuring you don't feel an over enthusiastic breeze. It boasts a textured feel which adds something different and dimensional which is great at only £42.

# 7 - And last but not least it's this beauty from New Look! Now, if you're thinking you like some of these coats but you wish you could merge some of them then this is the coat for you! If you look closely at #1 and #5, this coat is essentially the love child of them, bringing a very light, summery colour with a longer length to make sure the cold is kept out but the warmer climate is not getting the better of you. It's priced at £44.99 which isn't one of the cheaper coats in this post but is likely to last right through until it starts snowing this year so is definitely something which you could invest in!

And that's my summary on some of the coats I have to choose between this summer! I cannot wait to actually invest in one of these and hope that my choices have inspired some of you guys!

Have you bought any of the coats featured in my post or have other recommendations? Let me know and I'll definitely check them out! 

 

Review | Rimmel London Wake Me Up Foundation | Beauty Brags

Rimmel London Wake Me Up
Foundation - £8.99 at Superdrug

This is the last foundation in my search for the perfect perfume before I will finally post what foundation I define as "perfect" and now use on a daily basis. So - spoiler alert - I have found that foundation and - another spoiler alert - although I do love this foundation, it's not my ultimately perfect foundation.

I used this product for just over a year after my favourite foundation could no longer be found in stores in my home country of Scotland and assumedly has been discontinued (sadface). It is a liquid foundation and I would recommend applying this product with your fingers as when the product first comes out of the bottle, it is pretty cold and foundation is best applied when warm so leaving it to settle on your fingers for a few moments heats the liquid up and makes it easier to apply and blends into your skin a lot better - goodbye orange faces!

The product boasts an anti-fatigue element and this could not be truer. I received so many compliments about not looking tired and looking quite fresh (even at work after a night out!) and I always recommended this product as the sole cause for this. I honestly do not know how it does it, but my face always looked fresher after applying which was a relief for my pasty white skin, especially in winter in Scotland! You can actually see how much I used the product from the quality of the bottle in the picture - faded and almost empty! It also lasts for ages and I only had to buy two of these bottles in the amount of time I had it which I was really impressed with - and in all honestly, I probably only had to buy the other bottle because I often apply foundation in the morning and then again in the evening if I'm going well, anywhere, really!

All in all, if you're looking for something that gives you a beautiful healthy glow and covers up your dark circles and skin impurities then this is the product for you! The only fault I could possibly have with this product is the fact that because it is a liquid foundation, getting the right amount out of the bottle can be a little tricky as one pump is not enough but two is too much so you're often left with a lot of excess foundation on your hands (literally!). Also the fact that if you do not allow the liquid foundation to warm up in your hands, you might struggle to get the product to blend properly with your skin, leaving you with orange marks around the side of your face but I think that can be said, in my experience, for any liquid foundation!

There is a range of tones available from ivory to natural beige (which actually looks quite dark!). The shade I have been using is soft beige which seems a tad light for what I would usually go for but is actually a perfect match so if you are buying online, I would recommend looking at the photos of the tones before purchasing and going by that instead of the description. Obviously if you are buying in-store, I would really recommend trying the product before purchasing! You can see a range of the tones from Superdrug here.

At the moment, the product is £8.99 at Superdrug but is included in a special 3 for 2 offer on the store website, but I am unsure if this applies to products in store as well. As always, the product is offered in most other stores which stock make-up and beauty products but I am unsure on the prices of these - a simple google price comparison site should fix that! I've included a photo of how the product looks out of the bottle and once again, I really hope that this has been informative and I would highly recommend this product.

Keep a look out for a post on my all-time favourite foundation - coming soon! This foundation ranked a close #2 in my search!

Review | Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish | Beauty Brags

Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish Hot
Cloth Cleanser - RRP:
£13.25

This is a product that my mum always nagged me to use as a teenager to help with acne and skin imperfections and I think it's fair to say that I wish I had listened to her sooner! I have a feeling I'm going to be saying that a lot throughout life but at least I can do a review on this mistake right now - a silver lining, perhaps?

Although people I've recommended this product to in the past have complained that it's quite expensive, I actually think it's relatively cheap for the sheer quality of the product. The RRP on the Liz Earle website is £14.75 for a starter kit of Cleanse and Polish. This means that it includes the muslin cloth that you need to wash the product off, whereas once you have this cloth, you can simply order the product for £13.25 until the cloth needs replaced. Although I think this is a decent price, the chances are you can get it cheaper from retailers such as Amazon, although I do know that some Boots stores do stock the product as well as John Lewis.

Instructions at back of Liz Earle
Cleanse and Polish pump

Using the product is so simple. If you order it in a pump (as shown in the picture), you only need to use the pump once in order to get the amount of product required to cleanse your entire face. If you're using the tube, one regular squeeze of the tube should suffice! Once you have spread the product evenly, wait a few minutes and then wash the product off by soaking the muslin cloth in warm water and bathing your face. Finish the routine by quickly splashing your face with cold water. And that's it - you're ready to go!

My face after using Liz Earle
Cleanse and Polish for around
two weeks

Of course, this range does come with other products such as the Tonic Skin Booster and a moisturizer which I will be reviewing in due course, but the Cleanse and Polish product on its own, in my opinion, is more than enough to open your pores and cleanse your skin. In just over two weeks, any spots or blemishes on my face have cleared up leaving my skin baby smooth and glowing - yes, actually glowing! I didn't actually notice the improvement until a friend of mine took a picture of me and a few other friends at a Halloween party on Friday. I've included a copy of this picture just so you can see the quality of my skin now (as I didn't use concealer or much foundation that night) although I don't have a copy of what my face looked like before I started using this product daily. I should also say at this point that I have also been using this product in conjunction with the moisturizer and skin booster, but as I have been using the cleanse and polish twice a day and occasionally without these other products, I feel that this product has been a contributing factor in clearing up my skin.

Anyway, I hope that this has been informative and I really would encourage anyone who struggles with skin impurities to give this product a try! It's really helped my skin so much and I couldn't imagine not using it now!

Have you got any cleansing products you think I should try out? Let me know!

Review | We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves | Brilliant Books

For my birthday, my friends were nice enough to get me (as well as other lovely gifts) a £15 voucher for Waterstones. So when I went to spend it and saw the 'buy one, get one half price' offer on so many books, I couldn't resist and naturally bought four. Oops.

The very last book I picked up was this one - We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. It was actually a friend I was with who suggested I buy it. The synopsis was fairly generic, I've taken a picture of it here; girl hasn't seen her brother in ten years after her sister mysteriously disappears when she's young, blah blah blah. But this novel was far from generic!

Split into different parts, the book has a major plot twist around part two or three. Until then, it is mildly intriguing as the main character recalls vague memories from her childhood regarding her sisters abrupt disappearance. The twist, which I won't give away here, will change the way you've been thinking throughout the entire book so far. An incredibly clever tactic used by the author in order to vary the readers mindset to empathize with the main character and even relate to her before the extent of her strange upbringing is revealed.

If anything, I would maybe say the writer reveals the twist a tad too early on. The novel progresses quite slowly after that but without abandoning the readers attention. It is a subject unfamiliar to the vast majority of readers and so therefore becomes harder to relate to - hence why the late revelation is so paramount to the books success.

A real insight into a completely different era, this book is a treasure and a definite must read this summer ... or any time, really. And with the RRP at just £7.99 or on Waterstones special offer, it's a bit of a bargain!

Have you read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves? Or maybe you have a book
to recommend that you just couldn't put down this summer?
Let me know!