Over the last few months, some of the most famous fashionista names have been showing their support for Fashion Targets Breast Cancer simply by putting pen to paper…

Teaming up with the fabulous lot at Filofax, we have a luxurious Osterley organiser filled with personal sketches and messages from the likes of Matthew Williamson, Giles Deacon, William Tempest and Orla Kiely. The most exciting part is that this one of a kind organiser could be yours! For a limited time only, it will be up for auction to raise money for Fashion Targets Breast Cancer. Join the auction on Ebay NOW!

Holly Fulton, whose gorgeous sketch is included in the organiser, said “I was delighted to be involved with the FTBC campaign, it’s such a relevant issue and sadly touches on a lot of people’s lives, it was an honour to be asked to participate. I love sketching and stationary is a secret obsession so combining the two was a pleasure!”

And if that incredible auction wasn’t enough…there is also the chance to win a pair of tickets to the exclusive Temperley London for Filofax launch and London Fashion Week A/W12 after show party held on Saturday 18th February. With the current bid in this auction at only £30, this is a chance to rub shoulders with the fashion industry’s finest and is sure to be an exciting evening not to be missed!

Remember, all money raised from both of these auctions will help us to make a real difference to the lives of women affected by breast cancer. So now all you need to do is place your bids for the chance to own a piece of fashion memorabilia and be part of a top London Fashion Week event!

Good luck!

Love, FTBC x

Happy New Year FTBC fans!

We’ve been taking a look at our exciting FTBC highlights…

• Launching back in April, our gorgeous faces of 2011 were revealed Cat Deeley, Karen Gillan and Sadie Frost and were seen on posters all around the country

• The ‘Fashion Is’ filming saw a whole host a fashionable insiders reveal what fashion meant to them

• With 26 gorgeous FTBC pieces for sale from the likes of top high street retailers M&S, River Island and Topshop, you really were spoilt for choice in what to buy!

• Our FTBC ‘Fashion Friday’ saw Twitter taken over with our #FashionIs launch, thank you to all those who sent us a tweet!

• The FTBC photo booths popped up in all the coolest places in London, including Lucy in Disguise

• The FTBC friendship bracelets were back in force for 2011 and were seen on the most stylish wrists around the country

All in all, we hope you agree, a pretty impressive 2011 campaign! But our biggest and by far the most important achievement this year is the money generated….

So drum roll please……

With your support, you helped us raise nearly £1 million for Breakthrough Breast Cancer! This money is helping Breakthrough improve and save the lives of those women who are affected by breast cancer in the UK. A HUGE thank you from all of us, we simply couldn’t have done this without you, our wonderful FTBC supporters.

So as we wave goodbye to a fabulous and successful 2011, we are now gearing up to bring you our 2012 campaign! There are some very exciting things being planned and we can’t wait to share them with you.

In the meantime all we can say is, launch date is 30th April 2012. Let the countdown begin!

Love FTBC x

October is already a busy month for Breakthrough with a hive of activity happening for our retailers and their gorgeous pink products.

But when our friends at our favourite online retailer my-wardrobe.com got in touch to tell us about this snazzy collaboration between themselves and Evian …yes you heard that right “Evian”, October got a whole lot more exciting.

Launching today, is their latest designer collaboration with Parisian fashion house Courrèges.
Creating a limited edition Evian bottle that features the daring designs and bold colours that encapsulates the iconic designer’s signature style….fashionable water bottles.

A little fashion fact for you is that Courrèges symbolic designs are still an inspiration to modern day icons such as Victoria Beckham – her sharp stylish mini dresses echo this iconic sixties
fashion designer icon.

If you hop on over to www.my-wardrobe.com/evian you’ll be able to purchase these special bottles for £3.99, bid on limited edition Courrèges dresses (word is that there are only 3 of these one-off reissued dresses from the sixties so you need to be quick) where we receive a mighty 25% donation of the proceeds and then you can take a look at their two MY-TV fashion films that were shot at the iconic fashion house – we all love to have a sneaky peak of the fashion houses don’t we ?

Since 2009 my-wardrobe.com has raised over £10,000 for the work of Breakthrough Breast Cancer. The donations from their limited edition pink Smythson notebook (on sale now here http://www.my-wardrobe.com/daily-fashion-buzz/in-the-pink) and this special Evian collaboration, will only add to this life changing donation.

Its breast cancer awareness month and it’s all systems go at Breakthrough HQ. This annual event is not only about raising money through selling lots of gorgeous pink products and fundraising its also about raising awareness for this terrible disease that affects over 47,000 women in the UK each year.

Team FTBC have the pleasure of continuing our relationship with some of our fashion brands throughout this month. To see for yourself all the gorgeous pink products that carry a donation back through to Breakthrough visit our shop below. Happy Shopping.

http://www.breakthroughbreastcancer.org/shop/index.html

Our wonderful friends at Style News London have written this London Fashion Week S/S 2012 special, exclusively for Fashion Targets Breast Cancer… 

It’s been fashion mayhem this month with the shows at Somerset House featuring London’s Top designer’s Spring/Summer 2012 collections. The much anticipated, fashion favourite ’s including Holly Fulton, Ashish, PPQ, John Rocha and Julien Mac Donald pulled out all the stops and focused on geometric designs, 60’s style and blossoming prints as must-have trends for next season.

Fashion Icon and renown TV judge, Julian MacDonald represented the modern female with models dressed in an array of sharp black tailored separates with military caps, dark shades and slicked back hair.  Whilst backstage, Paul Costelloe gave us his top tips on key looks for S/S12 “It’s flirty shift dresses, bare legs, ankle socks and your hair up.”

Not short of a few Celebrity friends, the shows always tend to bring out the VIP’s and with stars including Nicola Roberts, Alesha Dixon, Kate Moss, Dionne Bromfield and Eliza Doolittle making front row appearances, once again London Fashion Week did not disappoint…..

Powered By Stylenewslondon.com

Written By Editor, Charlene Campbell

A huge thank you to Charlene and Style News London for this special blog post. Love FTBC xx

September has finally arrived and with this weather it certainly feels like Winter is upon us – sniff !

However we can’t complain, as here at FTBC HQ we have had a fun filled Summer and still have one more holiday left to go before we pack our Summer wardrobe away. We are secretly quite excited at the thought of wrapping up in our winter woollies, boots and coats …although don’t hold us to that!

This is the time of year when we wrap up our FTBC 2011 campaign up too.  Count the pennies, file the garments away and complete all our thousands of press cuttings and wash up meetings.

It has been a phenomenal success and you have all helped raise over £750,000 by buying products from our high street retail partners and our FTBC friendship bracelets and mirrors. The difference that money will make to our work is immense.

We wanted to say for one last time this year, a MASSIVE thank you and a round of applause to our retail partners and our lovely contacts who work with us to make this campaign possible.

Thank you to:

Marks and Spencer, River Island, Topshop, Warehouse, Coast, My-wardrobe.com, Laura Ashley and Bottlegreen.

Together you and your customers are helping change the lives of women in the UK.

You all rock!

p.s We’d love to hear from anyone if they would like to get involved in the FTBC 2012 campaign

Please get in touch with

Natalie Legg

FTBC Campaign Manager

nataliel@breakthrough.org.uk

0207 025 2427

 In last weeks blog I told you about our beautiful supporter Emma Barnes and how we had invited her to come to London for a special photoshoot.

 Well I’m pleased to say that the shoot went extremely well and Emma looked stunning, she had a wonderful day and has left with lots of happy memories and a new dress, pair of shoes and designer bracelet….any girls dream day hurh ?

 The day started with Emma and her best friend Gill arriving in London and meeting us for a delicious lunch at the Princess in Old Street where we all ate fish cakes drank apple juice and talked about Emma’s children, her and Gills friendship, holidays, fashion and most importantly the and the day ahead. Considering Emma is undergoing strong chemotherapy on a 3 weekly basis she was beaming with excitement for the day ahead, she radiates so much happiness and positive energy its hard not to feel affected by her.

 Whilst having lunch I presented her with a gift from the luxury jeweller and celebrity favourite Monica Vinader (who we all lust after here in FTBC HQ) who had given her one of their hot pink Fiji bracelets as a gift to mark the occasion  – she was thrilled !

 After lunch we headed over to Coast Head Office and met with the charming make-up artist Bethan. Inika Make-up very kindly answered our prayers and generously offered to do Emmas makeup for her and Inika is a fairly new brand in the UK, we’ll do a separate blog post on it later in the week but the fact that its 100% organic, vegetarian friendly and contains no nasty’s it gets a thumbs up from us !

As soon as Emma was ready we gave her the dress that had been especially made for her by the lovely ladies at Coast. Emma soon warmed up and had an extremely enjoyable afternoon and was a natural.

Here’s a couple of shots behind the scenes and off Emma. Keep an eye out for these shots as they’ll be appearing a lot during October.

 Massive thanks to Coast, Inika Make-up, Monica Vinader and Emma – we all had a wonderful and very special day .

As well as working on FTBC we also have the pleasure of looking after fashion brands that work with us during October when our biggest fundraising campaign happens. Breast Cancer Awareness Month (or BCAM as it’s known) to many.

 During this time our much loved brands such as M&S, ghd, Adidas, Avon, Coast, Laura Ashley, my-wardrobe.com and Warehouse (lots more too) all sell gorgeous pink products that each carry a donation back to Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

 This year Coast have chosen 2 show stopping dresses and a striking pair of sandals to sell and tomorrow we are bringing one of our incredible supporters Emma Barnes down to London for a photoshoot where she will be modelling these clothes together with lots of other special pieces to appear in our supporter magazine.

 I’m not going to go into too much detail as will share more next week but for the time being we’d like to say a heartfelt and huge thank you to the following people and companies for making tomorrow happen.

Thank you to Coast for the dresses and loan of their studios and photographer. Thank you to the lovely girls at Inikia make-up who very kindly answered our prayers and offered to do Emmas make-up for her. Thank you to Luke Young from Vidal Sassoon who is going to be styling Emmas naturally beautiful hair and most importantly thank you to Emma for being our gorgeous model.

 Photos and gossip from the shoot next week.

Natalie x

Surely it can’t be the end of summer already?! Well with these chilly breezes and cloudy skies we may think we’ve had the best of summer 2011. Combined with Autumn/Winter previews from designers and the high street, we might as well be pulling on the winter coats and boots now!

But fear not…the likes of Topshop, River Island and Warehouse are flying the flag for summer dresses, sandals and sunglasses and are in full SALE mode! We’ve braved the sale rails and believe us when we say there are some fantastic tempting bargains on offer!

What’s more, if you missed out on getting your hands on this year’s FTBC pieces we’re pleased to report that there is still time! If you were kicking yourself at not buying the collectable ‘Flag & Crown’ Warehouse tee or the pretty bowed sandals from River Island, visit their websites now and grab them while you can!

Remember 30% still comes to FTBC so you’ll be helping fashion make a difference.

Happy sale shopping FTBC fans and enjoy the summer offerings!

Love FTBC x

FTBC and Breakthrough have had a fantastic couple of weeks, filled to the brim with fundraising activities and award wins!

As you know, the M&S Five Peak Challenge took place last week. It was a challenge which demanded a constant supply of energy and endurance from all members of the M&S retailing leadership team. We are incredibly proud to say that they have completed all five climbs in an extremely impressive time of just under 48 hours…what an amazing achievement!!! 

Thanks to M&S staff and YOU, our amazing supporters, their fundraising total currently stands at a staggering £939,458 and we’re still counting!!!!! The team are well on their way in reaching their target of £1 million.

If you’d like to make a donation to the team or simply want to find out more visit http://www.justgiving.com/teams/5peakschallenge

And now on to the awards….!

The first of which was the New Media Age Effective Award for our iBreastCheck iPhone app, with the judges declaring that it “provides a bench mark of excellence for the industry”. The UK’s first app of its kind, it offers vital information for women, encouraging them to be more breast aware. The app is available now to download for free from iTunes and www.iBreastCheck.com.

At the prestigious Institute of Fundraising Awards on Monday night, Breakthrough walked away with 3 awards! The Award for Most Innovative Fundraising Campaign was given to the campaign Too Many Women (TMW) with Harry Becher and Catriona Blampied, founders of TMW receiving the Volunteer Fundraiser of the Year Award. What’s more our Go Pink campaign scooped the Best Use of Events award!

So you can see, it has been quite a month for us here at Breakthrough and FTBC HQ! We’d like to say a BIG thank you to you, our fans and supporters, as these achievements wouldn’t have been possible without your help!

If you’d like to join in on the award winning Go Pink this October, please visit http://breakthrough.org.uk/get_involved/raise_money/go_pink/

Shannon x