Brum days- exploring

I started off my afternoon in Birmingham in the Barber Institute of Fine Art where they've had a wonderful new acquisition of a Rosalba Carriera pastel work, a Portrait of Gustavus Hamilton, 2nd Viscount Boyne- it's amazing and I could probably stare at it for hours trying to soak up the technique. Anyway the gallery is really close to Emma's university campus and I met up with heer for a few hours shopping as well as fitting in some drawing.
After Pearl told me about the Cow vintage store in Manchester, which I got some fantastic buys at, I found there's also a store in Birmingham so today I decided to make a visit. It's not too far a walk from Selfridges but it is in a different direction to where my shopping normally takes me.

But wow! The stock is amazingly extensive. Emma even found a Diane von Furstenburg shirt which she bought.

Here she is looking sweet in a little white dress:

It's odd how rarely I see the side of Selfridges/the Bullring that gets photographed, but it was looking quite stunning today. I love the contrast of the other architecture.

There was very little left of the Sonia Rykiel for H&M collection and it's only been 4 days! The dolls were rather adorable.

The Louis Vuitton store had a beautiful new birdcage window display.

We also ended up going to a completely different area of the city looking for a shop selling Hello Kitty colectables and never found it! I even had two maps- whoops. Shall research better for next time. Speaking of which Hello Kitty was taunting me at 20% off in all the Clinton Card shop windows.

Normally: myself+fellow shopoholic=disaster for both purse and wardrobe space, but somehow today I managed to only spend £8 on vintage as well as stocking up on tights in M&S. My mum thinks this is pleasing progress =)