iblog

Rushda: Thousands of shoppers have crowded British shops early today in order to grab bargains in the end of year sales. With big brands making big cuts in prices, it seems that everyone would rather turn up outside shops in the early hours of the morning instead of traditionally celebrating Boxing Day with the family. Indeed, this year has been a record year as many shops have claimed that sales queues more than doubled from last year. The huge queues started shortly after 4am this morning, focussing on Oxford Street in London. It is claimed that up to £1000 a minute was being spent at some shops today. The prices, naturally, were very attractive with stores such as Birmingham's Selfridges offering up to 75% reduction in price of goods. In the Oxford Street branch, over 9,000 customers walked in in the first hour of sales in the morning, and it is estimated that "500,000 shoppers ventured into London's West End" today. The sale chaos wasn't restricted to London, as Essex's Lakeside shopping centre was also packed with thousands of shoppers, the quantity being a third higher than last year. It is thus clear that this year marks a record in sales and that the perks of Christmas are far from ending for shopowners. As Richard Dodd, from the British Retail Consortium, said:

"Today is much busier than Boxing Day last year as more stores have started their post-Christmas sales early, rather than waiting till tomorrow. It's clear that retailers are going to have to offer bumper sales to tempt customers in, because finances are under strain this year. A lot of customers are reluctant to spend and there are worries about how their finances are going to stand up."

What I don't understand myself is why people go through all the bother to brave the crowds and spend hours sifting through items by hands so early after Christmas. In my experience online sales are much better because you can do it all from the comfort of your own room in half the time! Thankfully, other people have had this good sense too, as statistics show that "3.6 million people spent part of their Christmas Day searching for good deals via the internet".

Rushda: You wouldn't have thought it a couple of years ago, but now high-waisted jeans are finally coming back into fashion. Thankfully, one of the benefits of this is no more "muffin top" - the unflattering flab which overhangs your trousers. Though no one would deny that hips are great, muffin tops have become something of an embarrassment for everyone caught displaying them. And yet for anyone who is not a supermodel, it seems inevitable. So are high-waisted trousers the answer? Marks and Spencer certainly seem to think so, and the whole of their next summer's wardrobe will be filled with them. The term "muffin top" has now become such a vocabulary mainstay that it is even in the dictionary now. It conjures up the perfect visual image - only one that is not so sweet. Originally popularised by Australian comedy Kath and Kim, shown on BBC Two, it is now a term almost every woman knows and fears. Apparently the blame for muffin tops goes to designers, whose outfits, whilst fitting the models perfectly, do not seem to translate to an average British audience. As Andrew Groves, head of fashion at Westminster University says:

"They worry about what looks good on the proportions of a model but not your average woman. As a result, there is a mismatch of image from the catwalks to the High Street."

But remember before you go to rush out to buy a new pair of high-waisted trousers to hide your bulges that even with high-waisters there is a bulge problem, only this time it will be your tummy. It's a sad fact that for many women, though they will now have more of a choice, what a choice it will be: looking like a muffin or looking pregnant. Personally, however, I don't think there is really so much to fear. I think the obvious rule still stands that if you are overweight then anything to you wear that is too tight (low-waisted or high-waisted) is going to look terrible. Furthermore, it is obvious that the different styles of jeans out there are designed to suit women with different body shapes. When will women realise that wearing what looks good and not what fashion dictates is the ultimate fashion gospel?

Rushda: The secret behind the intelligence of famous curvy women such as Nigella Lawson may be in their curves. New research from the US has revealed the very interesting finding that curvy women are, on the whole, more intelligent than their waif-like counterparts. Not only that but they are even said to produce more intelligent offspring as well. Apparently the bigger the difference between a woman's waist and her hips, the better. During the study, 16,000 women and girls of varying degrees of voluptuousness were asked to take cognitive tests and the results were striking - the curvy women did better on the whole and so did their children. Evolutionary scientists believe that the result could possibly be explained by the fact that fatty acids found around the hips is most likely to be Omega-3 which has long been said to boost mental abilities. I'm not sure to what certainty we can point to something abstract as intelligence as lying in particular fatty tissue. Many experts too feel that any result at this stage would be a little premature given all the different factors we need to take into account. For example Martin Tovee of Newcastle University says:

"On the fatty deposits being related to intelligence front, it's very hard to detangle that from other factors, such as social class, for instance, or diet."

No doubt curvy women will be very pleased to hear the findings of the study - not only have they long been shown to be the most attractive, now one is saying that they have the best beauty and brains.

Rushda: Many women have wondered before whether the super-long eyelashes they see in makeup adverts are really the result of the product being advertised. Well, a new Rimmel advert featuring top model Kate Moss has been found to have broken advertising rules because it featured digitally-enhanced eyelashes. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found that the advert for Magnif'Eyes did not give a realistic image of the effects of the mascara worn in the picture. Though Rimmel themselves denied that the model wore fake eyelashes, they admitted that the eyelashes were "cleaned up and enhanced" after the shoot, something which is still unacceptable according to ASA as it exaggerates the benefits of the product. Furthermore, even the text accompanying the adverts has been found to be exaggerated, with Rimmel claiming that wearers actually experience "70% more lash lift", something which is highly contested. Though Rimmel insist that they have done nothing wrong, David Allan from Coty, the company which owns the Rimmel brand, says:

"Coty had full approval from the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre for the Rimmel Magnif'Eyes advertising. This campaign ran in line with the original planned schedule. We recognise the ASA has become more stringent in their application and Coty will continue to be fully compliant with the ASA guidelines."

The ASA has now banned Rimmel from continuing to display these adverts, and will only allow similar adverts in future if there was an accompanying disclaimer which pointed out the touch-ups.

Matthew: I have long been suspicious of people that wear clothes adorned with arbitrary slogans. T shirts with meaningless numbers, emblems of universities the wearer’s never been to and garages and diners that probably don’t even exist. There’s nothing particularly decorative about the number 26 in my opinion. And don’t get me started on those apolitical business students getting ready for a career in investment banking heading down to Topshop to buy a mass manufactured Che Guevara T shirt. People seem perfectly happy to cover themselves in symbols, which if they have any significance, the fashion follower is totally ignorant of it. Some people are even content to have kanji or Chinese letters tattooed onto their skin. Would they even know if the tattoo artist instead of writing ‘Barry Hooper’ had written ‘Ignorant simpleton’? I think not. ‘Where’s this rant going?’ I hear you cry, avid Ibloggers… Well, this week my suspicions were confirmed, as menswear chain Burton’s came under fire for selling a t shirt whose decoration was Cyrillic script. The chain had clearly not even taken the trouble to consult a Russian speaker as to what the sentence actually said. It turned out to be a slogan of an extreme right-wing Russian nationalist organisation. The slogan was ‘Cleanse Russia of all non-Russians.’ People! Fashionistas! Beware of draping yourselves in symbols of which you have no understanding. You never know what you might be standing for.

Rushda: It's a surprising statistic because most would have thought that men were on the whole more net-savvy, but according to a net measurement firm, apparently young women are the ones most likely to be found on the internet. 18% of all Britons online are young women in the 18-34 age group and they spend significantly longer using the internet when compared to their male counterparts. There are thousands of sites women use frequently - from networking sites such as facebook, to pregnancy sites. And then add on all those fashion stores online and I think I can see where the statistics are coming from! Glad to know I'm not in the minority here.

Rushda: We've seen the huge Topshop frenzy of thousands of women eager to bag their special and unique (notice the irony) clothes designed by Kate Moss. Now New Look has jumped on a similar bandwagon by releasing their own collection of celebrity summer dresses designed specially by Lily Allen. Ok, I admit that I do not know who Lily Allen is but that's not the point. I just can't understand why something can look nicer to you just because someone cool (supposedly) has designed it. The collection can be viewed here, and doesn't look anything special to me. In fact, the idea that it's supposed to be special because of Lily actually puts me off.

Rushda: I first heard about the new cosmetics brand Lush on a student forum where so many people were going on about it. So I took the recommendation as well as that of a friend and decided to pop along to try it out. The selling point of the shop is the fact the cosmetics are all (rather lovingly it seems) handmade using natural ingredients like fruit and veg. Groovy? I guess so. Well, sounded a bit too gimmicky to me at the start and I was very sceptical about whether any of it would work half as well as some of my Boots staples. I have to say, however, I am pleasantly surprised by what I have bought. It's all been really nice on my skin and I can now understand why Lush has built up such a huge fanbase.

Alex: The stupidity of standing outside a branch of Sainsburys to waiting for a supposedly environmentally sound bag is shown as being even more stupid than it is already. Not only does the bag not use conventional cotton, a material that causes large scale environmental damage in its production, but also they were more than likely made under conditions where workers are denied access to their basic rights, including the right to unionise, and are paid very little. The idea that any person will use their designer bag to carry actual shopping is almost as stupid as all these stupidities put together. Rather they will more likely just use the bag as well as plastic ones, thus defeating the object. If you didn't manage to get hold of one, don't worry. You can pay some tout a huge steaming wad of cash on Ebay and the charities will never see a penny. This does not compare to the disgust I feel that May 1st, International Workers Day, is now associated only with going out to shops to buy clothing lines endorsed by dangerously thin, cocaine stuffed, Doherty-dating super-models. The range is basically precisely the same tat regularly sold at Topshop, but with an inflated price tag. Sigh.

Jeanne: Well it seems that the Kate Moss Collection for Topshop is now out. As with most of Topshop's apparel these days it is a mix of the impractical, the lurid and the overpriced with a few stylish pieces thrown in. Nevertheless it is likely that these clothes will be swept off the rails by young people determined to emulate the style (whether Kate possesses any is arguable...) of their fashion idol. However, given Miss Moss is a size 4, it is debateable as to whether her range will suit the average size 10 or 12 girl. But, for those of us who stay well away from the likes of Topshop and its smock tops, this is just something else to grin at. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at all those poor Topshop clones who will be walking around in the coming days dressed from head to toe in the Kate Moss range.