Wow! I could not believe it when I received the email telling me I had won the #NextGuestBlogger competition. After a few (read: many) yelps of delight and a cup of tea plus some celebratory chocolate (natch) I sat down to properly re-read the prize details. Three outfits from the Next SS13 collection of  £150 each, which I would then get to blog about. Pretty amazing! So here you have it, my first guest post for Next and my first outfit. To begin, I was in a bit of tizz about what to choose. There are so many options and what’s more, a lot of the Next pieces come in Petite, which is brilliant when you are just 5″2, but required even more careful choosing. So I browsed and browsed. I knew I would definitely go for the biker jacket (wardrobe staple and I love the padded slim sleeves on this one) so I decided to build an outfit around it. However, I didn’t want to take the easy option and team with skinny jeans, so instead I chose a pair of jersey pants. Then the look started to take shape – suddenly I knew I wanted to create the kind of outfit you could wear while travelling, hanging around an airport looking stylish, a little bit cool, but ultimately feeling comfy. The ankles boots and slouchy spacious bag were obvious choices and then, of course, a slub tee. My original intention had been to do a full black and white monochrome look – it’s everywhere right now, and understandably so, it is such an effective look and so easy to do – but I thought I’d soften this outfit up with grey. So, below you have a collage of the original outfit concept and the photographs bringing it to life plus a short You Tube video talking you through each piece. What do you think? Do you like the look? Is this the kind of thing you would have chosen? 

ps. See my post on the Next blog here and my winning entry on SS13 key trends here.