Vogue Festival 2012

Last Friday afternoon, I was lucky enough to finish work early and head down to South Kensington (in a thunder storm, I might add) for the first ever Vogue Festival, held at the Royal Geographic Society. The morning session (featuring talks from Nigella Lawson, Christopher Bailey and more) already over and causing quite a stir in the twittersphere, the afternoon attendees eagerly arrived for a whole host of talks, lectures and workshops, plus temporary hair colouring and extensions from Josh Wood and his team, smoky eye workshops from Armani's top make-up artists and beauty-industry experts helping you find the perfect shade of red lipstick.

The Friday afternoon line-up

Being the first ever Vogue Festival, and the first event of its kind, there were a few things it could definitely improve on (the festival space felt rather small for the capacity, there were some headache-inducing blue lamps lighting the darker corridors and the £75/half day price tag made the festival pretty inaccessible) but in my eyes they really succeeded in their mission of offering an insight into the world of the magazine.

In-depth coverage of all the session's events will follow soon, but for now here's a few of my favourite bits from the afternoon...

• Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana squabbling over just exactly how many years it's been since they first went into business together..
• Mary Portas and Anne Robinson having a "short, red, little-bit-of-attitude" bob-off..
• Stella McCartney personally offering an incredibly ballsy 16-year-old student work experience on the spot..