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!

It’s totally the wrong time of year for this review, but I didn’t go on holiday until late September so even then it would have missed the boat a bit. For those of you going away to sunny climes over the Winter break, here is a way of rubbing it in even more. For those of you who won’t be going away until next Summer, it gives you chance to stash a couple of quid a month so you can buy this in June!

This Summer, the folks at Imedeen were kind enough to send me some of their Tan Optimizer to try. I have very pale skin that just doesn’t seem to tan, so I thought I was a fairly good test subject. Some people argue that everyone tans, but I promise you that for 26 years I’ve found it really difficult to get my skin to go any colour other than bright lobster red. I lie in the shade, I top up my SPF 50 every couple of hours, and still if I get any colour it’s pink to say the least. And don’t tell me to use a lower SPF, try sunbeds or ’sit in the sun for a bit to get used to it’. I don’t want cancer, kthnx.

So a product that tops up all the stuff in the body that encourages a tan seemed like it might be a good solution. Tan Optimizer isn’t a miracle formula, and to be honest, you could probably get the same result from feasting on tomatoes (for the lycopene), taking loads of multivitamins and so on, but this offers all that in one smallish daily capsule. You take the capsules for four weeks before your trip, continue taking them while you’re away, and then continue after you return to prelong the tan. The idea is that it “supports your skin’s own sun protection mechanism”. You’ll still need to use an SPF, but if you take it properly, you should get a more even, longer-lasting tan.

So did it work? Well, if you bear in mind that I didn’t really sit out in the sun much, but walked around a lot in desert heat of 30 degrees plus and didn’t burn at all, then yes it definitely did. I didn’t go St Tropez bronze, but that wasn’t my plan. On my return people actually commented that I’d picked up some colour – a miracle for me. Looking back on photos of the holiday, I can see that my arms in particular did indeed tan lightly, and that colour lasted a good few weeks after I got home. For me, this is worth £40. It may sound a lot but I spend that on a taxi to the airport without thinking twice. Protecting my skin for a fortnight is worth far more than that (because every bad sunburn increases the risk of skin cancer).

Imedeen Tan Optimizer £38.50 for 60 capsules (2 month supply)