History, Harrods and Handbags; Our Trip to London

On Wednesday, 25th November the fashion society swapped their usual meeting point on campus for a day in London. From the V&A, to Oxford Street, here's what we got up to!

We began the day by visiting the “Bags: Inside Out” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Although the tickets were slightly more expensive than our student loans hoped, the exhibition was everything and more of what we expected! The exhibition was located over two floors and explored much more than just gorgeous handbags.

The V&A detailed what life was like before the handbag was created; the thought of having no handbag honestly made me want to curl up in a ball and cry. The exhibition presented various bags from different time periods in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colours and styles. The makers table also physically detailed the design and making process of a handbag as well as the tools used when creating a handbag.

Of course, the exhibition presented some iconic handbags within their celebrity endorsement section, not to mention Carrie Bradshaw’s truly breath-taking Baguette bag! Tears were very nearly shed believe me… Another aspect of the exhibition I couldn’t help but notice was the sheer popularity of the celebrity endorsement section. I’m convinced everyone had the same thought as me running through their head- I wonder if I could get away with grabbing the Baguette bag and sprinting without being rugby tackled by security?

Once finished at the V&A, we walked into Harrods pretending we could buy more than an apple from the food hall and browsed their seven floors of luxury.

Next, we sweated buckets on the tube to Oxford street and immediately proved that we were tourists by taking 200 pictures of the Christmas lights for our insta stories- duh! We then split into groups as fitting 19 people in a shop in London at Christmas time was just really not ideal, as you can probably imagine. I personally witnessed Char, Jas and Izzy spend their life savings in Urban Outfitters then it was time to stop spending the money we wished we had and meet up with the rest of the group.

Now, for some reason I personally felt the need to go to BOP and drink far too many VK’s (as usual) instead of having a few civilised drinks in London with the rest of the group... From what I heard, the guys had their fun in a random spoons on Bakers Street and stumbled their way back to Winchester.

All in all, we had such a lovely time exploring and spending way too much money. Ready to get back to uni and work hard in the hopes I can one day enjoy one of those bags!

Pictures and videos from the trip are on the fashion society’s Instagram!

Written by Rachel Miglorine

Edited by Izzy Fletcher