Congratulations to notsobig!

As mentioned in our last post, our Highgate stockist, notsobig, won a Junior Design Award too - for Best Independent Retailer. Well deserved! Their Jubilee window display is looking extremely pretty at the moment, featuring our Jubilee Dress, accessorised with some particularly regal pearls and, of course, a tiara ...

Some exciting news!

We are delighted to share with you that ilovegorgeous has been awarded the Junior Design Award for Girl's Designer Fashion.

The Junior Design Awards recognise excellence in the whole arena of children's fashion, interiors and lifestyle, toys, books, food and dining and travel.

We're thrilled to receive our award and congratulate our Highate stockist notsobig on their award for Best Independent Retailer.

Girls will be... Tomboys, and a Jubilee competition

What an odd time we're having at the moment here in England! It's spring but we've still got cold and rainy weather, but summer is on its way - we promise! - and, wow, will we be pleased when we can wear our sandals and bare our shoulders to the sun! In these yet-to-be-warm times we're all turning to plimsolls, cotton knitted dresses and cardigans to keep off the chill while we wait.

Lucky Dress and Gold Sparkly Plimsolls from ilovegorgeous...

This season Sophie and Lucy have designed more playsuits than ever for the tomboys among our gorgeous girls. We've always been renowned for our fabulous party dresses and gorgeously girly separates but we know from our own children that even the girliest girl has days when climbing and clambering are on the agenda, and some girls simply refuse to wear a dress or skirt at all! So we've come up with a range of playsuits and jumpsuits that come in a long and short-legged, and in a range of fabrics; tiny floral prints, cool silver spot cotton, simple knitted cottons or bright and funky cotton crepe. Twill shorts and graphic knitwear such as our Marley or Palm jumper complete the offering for even the fussiest customers!

Jubilee Dress in shell pink from ilovegorgeous...

 Are you getting ready for the Jubilee? We're running a competition on Pinterest to offer you the chance to win one of our fabulous Jubilee dresses, Crown Necklaces and signed copies of one of our favourite books, Nicholas Allen's hilarious 'The Queen's Knickers'. We'd love to see your inspirational ideas for celebrating the Jubilee - so why not join in? Find details here... happy pinning!

Dreaming of blue skies and bucket-and-spade days...

We had a rare glimpse of blue sky this week, and the sun shone for a while... making us dream of hot summer days, picnics on the beach, ice cream, sandcastles and swimsuits. We've created a new Pinterest board to give us all something lovely to look at while the skies are grey. Find it here.

Take a look at our beachwear collection for your gorgeous girls, this year we've added a capacious sequinned beach bag to our range, and for the first time we're offering bikinis and sunglasses too. Protect delicate skin from the sun with a soft cotton voile beach cover and pop a cute playsuit in your beach bag for trips to the cafe!

All orders in May will receive a free handbag-size sample of our favourite sun cream for little ones from Green People. And as an added bonus - all orders will benefit from free delivery (worldwide) until midnight (GMT) on Saturday 12th May! Just use the code FREEPOST at checkout.

Photo credit: Porthcurno Beach in Cornwall - this is available as a print on art.co.uk

English Fairy Tales in the Spellbound Forest

 

You may remember last summer we told you about the Just So Festival, now Wild Rumpus, the company behind the super-successful festival, has come up with a magical event to share traditional English fairy tales with a new audience in a mystical woodland setting.

Spellbound Forest takes place on 19/20 May in Delamere Forest, Cheshire. Take a look at the website to discover more.

There are also some great downloads - how to make an origami bird to take along and help create an installation - and each fairy tale is available to listen to or read on screen. If you travel to the event by train there is a special goody bag available too.

It's just the start of the festival season - we'll keep you posted on the best child-friendly events in the UK this summer!

Click here to view the website

Hip Hip Hooray for the Circus!

The magic and rustic glamour of a small, rural circus inspired the star prints and frothy skirts of this season's collection. The most magical of them all is the wonderful Giffords Circus who tour of the South of England during the long summer months – they are kindly offering one of our gorgeous customers a FREE family ticket to one of their wonderful shows this summer. To enter our competition please visit our Facebook page.

Circus pictures courtesy of www.giffordscircus.com

Happy Birthday to our Queen!

Saturday 21st April is our Queen's birthday, Her Majesty will be 86 this year, the year of her Diamond Jubilee.

An exhibition at London's Victoria & Albert Museum features portraits of Queen Elizabeth II by royal photographer Cecil Beaton, celebrating Her Majesty in her roles as princess, monarch and mother and coincides with the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

Jane, from our London office, visited the exhibition last week and gave us an ilovegorgeous review:

"Some of the dresses the Queen (then princess) and her sister were wearing in the photos of when they were younger are in star and butterfly prints/fabrics - so interesting that even then those were the motifs chosen. Our archive, current and forthcoming collections all feature star prints or butterfly prints - they seem to be perennial classics. 

The dress worn by the Queen's daughter, Princess Anne, at her coronation was really sweet - puff sleeves, short in length, frills and bow at the back: 

The dresses worn by her attendants have bodices similar in shape to the Jubilee dress in our current collection, The use of silver and gold embroidery on their dresses is very ilovegorgeous!

In some of the photographs of the Queen as a teenager, Beaton uses cascades of flowers, floral garlands and painted backdrops to set the scene - this really reminded me of ilovegorgeous shoots, are we influenced by photographic history or is this a timeless theme?

There is a recording of the Queen speaking on Children's Hour during WW2 when the announcement that children would need to be evacuated had been made. She was still young but so confident and reassuring.

It was so lovely to see family pictures, when her children were young and them together looking so natural/relaxed, just like any other family snaps.

The exhibition made me realise just how much change she will have seen during her reign - conflict, births, deaths, marriages, different prime ministers...

The sweetest thing was two little girls in the exhibition who were looking at the photos, wandering around singing their own version of God Save the Queen (so funny!)."

Thanks to Jane for visiting the exhibition and giving us her personal thoughts - with a nod to ilovegorgeous style!

The exhibition finishes in London on Sunday 22nd April - this weekend - and then goes on tour:

United Kingdom

• Leeds City Museum - 8 May - 24 June 2012
• Norwich Castle Museum - 7 July - 30 September 2012
• Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne - 13 October - 2 December 2012

International

• Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, Australia - 25 February - 15 April 2012
• Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada - 1 June - 3 September 2012