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The Big Feastival
We ended our summer festival season with a bang at Jamie Oliver's Big Feastival held at Alex James' Farm in The Cotswolds. We were lucky to have a great position for our stall on 'Street Food Avenue' outside of the Main Arena. Apart from a brief spell of thunder, lightening and rain on the Saturday when my wellies were finally used, the weather was terrific. We were non-stop busy every day applying tattoos and glitter and often had a long queue of people and children outside our tent. We would open at 10am and as there were only two of us running the stall, we would not manage to break for lunch till after 5pm!
The festival is in the gorgeous Cotswold village of Kingham and the train station is literally only a 3 minute walk away so if you were going to come for the day from London, I would say take the train to avoid possible delays on the roads.
The line-up this year included Mark Ronson, Tinie Temper, The Kaiser Chiefs, Ella Henderson, The Proclaimers and Reggie n' Bollie to name but a few. Although we were too busy to watch any cooking demos going on, I did manage to walk round and sample lots of the foods being marketed there like unusually flavoured bacon & maple syrup popcorn and gogi berry smoothies. Amongst the small artisan stalls there were in fact quite a few big commercial brands there like Jacobs Cream Crackers, Higgidy Pies, Moretti Beer, Neff Kitchens, Metcalfe popcorn and even Renault Cars.
The Cheese Hub has a bar, dance floor and DJ stage where Alex James would draw a crowd. Upstairs was a VIP section run by The Groucho Club which had a good view above the crowds to the main stage in the distance.
There were lots of families with young children and a lot of people came on a day ticket rather than staying for all 3 days camping. It was a nice crowd and although very busy, it felt safe and friendly. Coming to the festival is not cheap - a glass of wine is £6.50 and expect to spend a fair bit on the food (which is good quality and delicious).
All that was left in the main arena after the festival closed
It had been a lot of hard work but a really great experience both for our Azzy London brand and as a personal experience. We met some amazing people, famous people, creative and quirky people! We got a good sense of what products and services people liked from us and by having a stall we really felt a part of each festival in a unique way. In fact, we wouldn't have wanted to do it any other way! ❤️
Wilderness Festival Azzy Salon
Wilderness Festival, on the beautiful Cornbury Estate in Oxfordshire, is a must-do if you are looking for a festival that strikes a balance between relaxation and revelry, artistic refinement and simple pleasures. This year the festival was headlined by Robert Plant and The Flaming Lips but so many other things are going on simultaneously from erudite speakers to meditation gurus to cool jazzy Ronnie Scott type bands in small watering holes to early morning yoga on paddle boards, a dance your naked truth workshop, delicious amazing food tents from well know upscale restaurants like Hix to small quirky food stalls serving vegan Indian food in an American yellow school bus.
The late night revellers flocked in their thousands to dance to the DJ Mix till dawn in, what is called, The Valley. DJ Goldie pulled the largest crowd and funnily enough we met Goldie in the Vegan Indian restaurant on the yellow bus and gave him a pack of tattoos for his daughter.
The Azzy London stall was set up in the exclusive Boutique Camping Section of the festival. Here we ran the Boutique Salon offering more than just metallic tattoos but a full make-over service that included hair braiding, blow dries and straightening, festival make-up and glitter. We had a superb team of hair and make-up professionals, many of whom work for high end magazine shoots, celebrities and TV. Heading up the hair braiding was Jöel Benjamin, famous for his instagram campaign #100BraidsofHappy.
The vibe was uber cool and relaxing in Boutique Camping in the sunshine. With the lounge music playing from the Swedish inspired Finca cafe and the Neal's Yard massage pods next door to us, the area was a refuge from the sensory overload of the main arena. If we hadn't been in a field in the Cotswolds I might have closed my eyes and thought we were in Ibiza.
By Thursday afternoon the Azzy Salon was already fully booked for the Friday and Saturday. The theme for Friday was Kaleidoscope but it was the Saturday Gold Rush theme that most people really went all-out for. Boutique Camping attracted guests from all over the world. Bloggers like Naomi Smart, Tv personalities such as Jonathan Ross and we had Teen Wolf actress, Holland Roden, come in for hair and glitter make-up. She was really friendly with us and we were delighted when she posted this photo below and tagged Azzy London to her 2.5 million Instagram followers!
AMEICAN TEEN WOLF ACTRESS - HOLLAND RODEN
On Sautrday night, Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons, came in at closing time for some last minute blue glitter make-up around the eyes! He grew up in Wimbledon, where Azzy London is based, so we got chatting. Here is the video he posted on the Mumford & Sons instagram!
IMG 1075 from Mary Hanover on Vimeo.
Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons came to our tent where I put some glitter make-up on his eyes.
Just like the Wilderness website says on the tin - Yes people really do swim nude in the river and I personally loved the the end of festival fire walking ceremony on the hilltop which had an almost ritualistic pagan feel as the sun set.
We will be back at Wilderness Festival 2017 hopefully with an even better salon with even more festival hair and make-up services in boutique!
Azzy London at Fold Festival Fulham Palace
We did our first ever music festival last weekend at the beautiful Fulham Palace in London! We set up over Friday, Saturday and Sunday to apply and retail our temporary metallic tattoos. Fold Festival was started up by Nile Rodgers in NYC and this is the first year they've brought it to London. The line-up included Alison Moyet, Beck, Thomspon Twins, John Newman, Grace, Incognito, Emin, Labrinth, Angie Stone and of course Nile Rodgers and Chic. The atmosphere was very friendly as it's a pretty small festival and Fulham Palace, being in Central London, isn't sprawling knee-deep muddy country fields like Glastonbury which was going on the same weekend.. We'd say Fold Festival was very civilised and lovely really!
This was the fab view we had from our stall!
Our spanking new gazebo tent looked fabulous - the roof has the Aqua Amor pattern from the tattoo sheet printed on the canopy so we really stood out in the field. And we were the only non-food traders there so boy did we feel special! Not to mention all the delicious food on offer which we got to sample in exchange for a few tats!
Set up and ready for the Festival to start
Most exciting of all was when Azzy and Mary got invited backstage! We put a few tats onto the celebrities.
Mary applying a tat to Singer Grace backstage
Grace loved our metallic tattoos and unexpectedly visited our stall!
Vocalist Vanessa Haynes of INCOGNITO took a shine to our Lotus Verde silver tats
Deborah Bond of INCOGNITO showing off her gold tat
Azzy about to go on stage at Fold Festival
We then got to go on stage with Chic and Nile Rodgers for the closing number of "Good Times"
Thank you so much to Event Umbrella (Vickie and Holly), Nile Rodger's Manager Camille and all the staff at Fold Festival.