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Old friends and followers will know the Oscars are my favourite night of the year. I love the glitz, the glamour and the frocks. I sometimes even pay attention to the winners (though I have to admit this year I’d barely seen anything that was nominated because the last thing I saw at the cinema was Sherlock Holmes).

Aaaaaanyway, onto the dresses. I used to do loads of predictions and wishlists when I was at CQ and I continued that over at The Nod, listing the frocks I’d like to see and the people I’d like to see them on. This year I managed to get five dress predictions right. I think that’s a record. I didn’t get the associated people spot-on, but you can never truly guess that. Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Lopez, Zoe Saldana, Charlize Theron and Lea Michele all wore dresses I’d predicted. With varied success. People have likened JLo’s dress to bubblewrap, but I loved it. Charlize, meanwhile, took all the good bits of her Dior Couture dress and ditched them in favour of a boob-rose, shiny prom dress nightmare. Ouch.

My best dressed of the night was easy. Cameron Diaz is so likeable, but she does have a tendency to look a right mess sometimes, and all I want to do is give her a hairbrush. That said, when she pulls it out of the bag, she really pulls it out of the bag…with a bit of help from Oscar de la Renta!

Gorgeous!

Once upon a time I used to blog about high street fashion every day. I’ve clearly lost the knack. But nevertheless, here are some of my current favourites. Shop away…

Black gladiator sandals £38 and multicoloured tribal sandals £45 both Next

Can you believe these shoes are from Next? For the first time I might actually understand why people feel the need to queue in the early hours for the sale if this is what they’re bashing out now. Their Spring / Summer collection is absolutely chock full of amazing catwalk inspired styles, and the shoes are some of the best. These over the top numbers are my faves (the tribal sandals are a dead ringer for last Summer’s Louis Vuitton ‘Spicy’ shoes) but also check out the occasionwear styles for diamante studded heels and sandals.

Metallic lime parka £75 Butterfly by Matthew Williamson

I have a weird, inexplicable obsession with shiny parkas. It all stems from a graduate collection I saw a few years ago, where models wore slinky raincoats over floaty tropical print dresses and skirts. It was very ‘gap year’ – the idea of being caught in a rainstorm in some exotic location and throwing on your boyfriend’s coat – and I fell in love with the look. Matthew Williamson did something similar a couple of years ago, and now he’s bought it down to his diffusion line. Score!

Skater dresses £30 each Dorothy Perkins

There’s been a hilarious string of angry conversations via social media for high street brands recently, and it’s all thanks to the fact these jersey dresses are being described as ’skater dresses’. “What is skater about THAT?!” screams angry emo girl #498. Of course, they mean ice skater, in reference to the leotard-style top and flippy skirt. I’m considering a couple of these to see me through the next few months. They’ll look just as good now with tights and a cardi as they will in 6 months with sandals and the sleeves rolled up. And they’re only thirty squids.

Bouquet crepe wrap dress £95 Cath Kidson & Home Front dancing dress £68 Tara Starlet.

Tea dresses may have been done to death recently, but I can’t help but still love them. Queen of twee Cath Kidston is ever-reliable for vintage style dresses, and this season she’s really pulled out all the stops. Meanwhile, retro designer Tara Starlet has a geat 40s inspired dress in everything from pretty florals to functional, practical grey. I like these two because they really look like they might have been unearthen from the back of grandma’s closet, but unlike vintage, they come in more than one size.

I was meant to be looking at the couture fashion week photos to admire the clothes, but instead, I found myself loving the hair. Now this is what you call a victory roll!

Above is at Eric Tibusch, but a couple of days earlier at Chanel, it was the same story and then some…

It’s kind of Varga girl meets Lily Munster. With BOWS. I love it.

Time for a totally self-indulgent WANT WANT WANT post (my blog, my rules).

My beloved Marc by Marc Jacobs handbag finally died yesterday. With a bit of clever sewing I can probably salvage it and carry it for a few more months, but given that I’ve carried it almost every day since October 2006, I think I’ve had my money’s worth out of it and it’s time to move on.

So it’s serendipitous that while researching for work (no, really), I stumbled across Linea Pelle. The brand is fairly unknown in this country, but the bags are carried by various Hollywood PYT’s and girls from The Hills, thus they all have a price tag of over $400. Ouch.

Sadly it’s too late for rational thinking. I have my heart set on one of these babies. I love the way all these bags from the ‘Dylan’ line have the shoulder straps folded over when you’re using the longer cross-body strap. I’ve got my heart set on something with a long detachable strap because I’m fed up of bags slipping off my shoulders all the time (I have crap posture). I like big, slouchy bags with lots of pockets and zips, and I like decent leather that’ll get better with age. These have all of that, plus no obvious branding or logos. I like quality, but I don’t want an ‘it’ bag because it’ll date so much faster.

Sadly, once international shipping and customs charges are lumped on top of the already high price, these babies are completely out of the realms of possibility, so for now I’ll have to continue to look at them wistfully and search UK retailers for something remotely similar. If you know of anything, please do let me know. I don’t care if it’s from Topshop or Temperley, so long as it’s leather, has a detachable cross body strap and looks exactly like the bags above. Not a big ask, right?!

I wish I was Hilary Duff. I bet she got hers for free…

Luella may be gone, but it’s far from forgotten, as Boohoo have proven with their latest additions…

They’re selling half a dozen different dresses with heart-shaped cutouts on the neck, as well as a few variations of the black and silver polka dot print from Luella’s Spring 2010 collection. I’d advocate a good old moan and groan about this under normal circumstances, but given the fact the Luella collection will never see the light of day, it’s the closest we’re gonna get.

Polka dot strapless dress £20 and black heart cut-out dress £20 both from Boohoo.com. More variations here, here and here.

I recently signed up to the Littlewoods fashion blog partner program. Unfortunately there were a few problems sorting out my product and it didn’t work out. Luckily Very.co.uk – which sells the same stuff under a different name (and with added Fearne Cotton) – swooped in to be my knight in shining armour and offered to send me an outfit instead.

True to their word, stuff arrived a couple of days later, so thank you Very for sorting me out.

The dress they chose for me is unfortunately not really my kind of thing. It’s a semi-fitted A-line shape, which makes me look like a barrel. As you can see in the left pic, I’m not too impressed! I added a belt to cinch it in a bit, but it still does very little for my shape and would be better on someone with smaller hips.

That said, the frills on the top are surprisingly pretty and flattering for a bigger bust. Reading the customer reviews on the site, it seems to be a hit with women who’re bigger up top. I found I liked the neckline much more when I pulled it down to an off-the-shoulder shape.

The dress is well made and fully-lined, and its now in the sale for only £12, making it quite a bargain.

Print-wise, snakeskin is not really something I’d wear normally, and I think a better bet would be the plain coloured version of the same shape with a tie belt for £49, which is part of Holly Willoughby’s collection for Very.

More successful were the accessories they picked out for me.

The bag, which I love, is by Dune and is now £22. It’s satin with a hard frame, a detatchable snake chain strap and a hard diamante bow. It’s much prettier in real life than it looks in the pictures. I carried it on New Year’s Eve, and it was big enough to hold all the essentials. There are even matching shoes.

While we’re on the subject, the shoes Very sent me are from the So Fabulous collection aimed at larger women, thus they’re wide fit. I’ll review them in more detail on Big Girls Browse shortly, but to sum up, they’re comfortable, they’re timeless, they’ll go with most outfits, but they’re a bit too wide for my size 6 feet!

Disclosure: You’ll probably see quite a few bloggers talking about Paris in the next day or so. You could just pretend there’s ’something in the air’ that’s making them discuss it. The truth is, there’s a competition running to promote Le Nouveau Paris and I couldn’t resist joining in…

The last time I went to Paris, I saw Eurostar, a cab, the inside of a posh hotel, a cab, and Eurostar again. I didn’t get to climb the Eiffel tower, I didn’t break into song on the steps of the Sacre Coeur (though I may have done that in my youth, surrounded by my school choir friends) I didn’t get to queue for ages at the Louvre, and I definitely didn’t get my wallet nicked out of my back pocket on the metro (*coughDadcough*).

I wasn’t, you dirty minded fools, there for a quick hotel suite ‘rendezvous’ (look! I used some French). I was actually at a blogger event for a skincare brand. It was lovely being taken to Paris, but the truth is I could have been anywhere. The only evidence that I was in Paris was the incredibly well-dressed PR person and the tiny portions of incredibly rich food we were served.

So I would love to go back. And this time I’d like to have the time to properly explore the places I’ve only seen from cabs or coaches in the past. I might even get to put that oft-forgotten French A’level to good use.

The Paris trip I’d like would be just like one of my favourite films, Funny Face. I would look like Audrey Hepburn, my boyfriend would be able to dance like Fred Astaire, and there would be a lot of pink, a lot of fun and more aspirational fashion than the latest issue of Vogue. I wouldn’t go as far as to pose in front of famous French buildings with balloons, but…ok, maybe I would!

The problem with my previous trips to Paris (as a teenager on French exchanges and choir trips) is that I’ve never had the funds to really enjoy myself. Staying in Formule 1 hostels in dodgy suburbs, you’d be forgiven for believing Paris is an absolute hole.

Of course, it’s not. It’s just not made for 16 year olds in bootcut jeans with backpacks and Brummie accents. Like Los Angeles, Paris is a city that’s best enjoyed if you have the money to do things; to stay in the nicest hotels, eat in the best restaurants and shop in the exclusive boutiques.

Hotel and restaurant wise, I’m sorted. My day job allows me to research these kind of things and call it ‘work’. We have a whole section devoted to the most stylish and A list places in Paris, and I’d be printing it out for reference. Hotel Lancaster definitely looks like my cup of tea.

Fashion wise, while I might never fit into the tiny clothing that Dior and Hermes stock for their ultra-chic Parisienne clientelle (especially after a Ladurée macaron or seven) I would definitely make up for it with handbags and shoes. I’d take this woman as my inspiration, but wear ballet flats (Repetto, natch) so I don’t tire halfway down the Champs Elysees. So many snooty shop assistants, so little time.

Once the shopping was done (if that ever happened) I’d head to the Eiffel tower, then the metro station named after Alexandre Dumas for cheesy photos (the boy’s a big fan – of Dumas, not having his photo taken). I’d finish my afternoon in Montmartre. Here I could stop pretending to be Audrey for a minute and pretend to be Amelie instead. This would involve a red dress, a spoon and an ill-advised fringe (maybe).

Evenings in Paris mean only one thing. Long walks by the Seine and a hundred and one photo ops, followed by dinner with champagne and an indulgent cocktail (dress).

Call me predictable, but my tolerance for London tourists having worked in Covent Garden (on and off) for a good four years has made me feel I have free reign to act like one myself in other cities. If I went back to Paris, I would gleefully do all the stuff I was supposed to do years ago, visit all the tourist haunts, spend way too much money and bore you all with 700 flickr photos at the end of it all. If you’re lucky, I’ll bring you back some runny cheese…

I’ve wanted the Black Halo Jackie O dress since forever. Especially after my girl crush Christina Hendricks wore it.

So thank you, thank you a million times thank you to ASOS for coming up with the goods.

Not identical, but close enough, and it’s made from a softer, stretchier fabric. I wore it on Friday and definitely got £38 worth of compliments. It’s getting increasingly difficult to find dresses that flatter at the moment with everything being really short and sparkly and huuuuuuge in the shoulder department, but I’d go as far as to say this probably looks better on a curvier woman than it does on the model. I’m now tempted to buy it in red and purple as well…

Edit: Asda have been in touch following this post and were quick to investigate this problem. Apparently there was a glitch in their system which is being fixed now they are aware of it. Items shouldn’t go on backorder in the first place, which is why there’s no notification sent out to buyers. Apparently very few people were affected and I was just one of the unlucky ones.

This hopefully means if any of you decide to order from Asda online, you should actually get your stuff.

Now, I’m off to buy a coat…

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Dear George at Asda,

If I visit the website of a big UK retailer and click to buy something, and if the website says it is in stock and available in my size, and if I later get a confirmation email saying it’ll take 3 – 4 days for delivery, and notice that the money has gone out of my account, I do not expect to still be waiting ten days later with absolutely no sign of my purchase.

I particularly do not expect, having waiting so long, to log on to the tracking page of the site (expecting to perhaps find an apologetic note about postal strikes) and instead to find that said item is now ‘on backorder’ with no explanation of when (or indeed, if) it will ever get to me.

I understand that there is no way of adjusting stock levels on a website every second of the day, and that sometimes things sell out before the page can be changed, especially when they’re such good value. But it doesn’t take much to set up an automated email that goes out to customers to inform them when their order is going to be delayed indefinitely. Especially when they’ve already paid for it. Someone or something has to change the status from ‘processing’ to ‘dispatched’ or ‘on backorder’ and an email should go out at that time. It’s not brain surgery, it’s common sense. It should not be the customer’s responsibility to chase an order when it doesn’t arrive, the retailer should make the effort to keep in touch with them when there are problems or changes.

Waiting ten days with no word, then phoning up to find that it will be at least another 2 – 3 weeks for an order to arrive is Just. Not. On.

By the time my sodding coat actually arrives, It’ll be almost December and half the cold weather would have been spent wearing last year’s threadbare offering. Thus I have cancelled my order, and you have lost a(nother) customer. Well done!

When I ordered from the new Tesco clothing website, my order came in 2 days and my card wasn’t charged until after the items were dispatched. That is how it should be done.

Take note, Asda. Just because you’re a big name doesn’t mean you can fob off your customers with half-arsed customer service and bad communication. There’s always an alternative and from now on I will be pointing people elsewhere.