Mercedes-Benz Start Up

On Tuesday August 14th, some of the Black Sheep Fashion girls and I attended the Mercedes-Benz Start Up competition here in Ottawa. Now I am going to rave once again about how much I love Twitter,  I actually heard about this event on Twitter and found out it was FREE! Free fashion event?! Those are words that you will hardly ever see in the same sentence. Just a few weeks prior we had attended a less than pleasing event (that we paid for!) and were a little worried about the quality of future events and the omission of a fee also made us skeptical. Boy, could we have been more wrong!
This event was wonderful, buried all our doubts and restored our faith in local events.

The event was held at Ogilvie Motors on St. Laurent and it was perfection. I brought along the boyfriend and Mercedes eye candy was the perfect distraction for him. To top it all of, drinks were provided, free of charge. Wine, champagne, beer, cosmopolitans, whatever your heart's desire! The only interruption in this service was during the actual show, where no cocktails were distributed, which at first put me off but in theory was probably for the best! If not, this could've resulted in me indulging in a few too many cosmos and some blurry pictures of the show.

The cherry on top of the cake was getting a chance to meet some wonderful Twitter friends! I actually was able to meet a handful of people I had been tweeting with recently. The cyber world is great and all  but it is always lovely to put a face and voice to a name (or tweets). It was great to finally meet Twenty York Street, Grace from Within Essence Productions and the stylish Carolynn Lacasse.

The designer line up of amazing Canadian talent included the dreamy Pure Magnolia, the sharp designs of Christopher Bates, cutting edge Caitlin Power, adorable Elise Bourque, and stylish Anastasia Lomonova. All of the designers were distinct and divine. The precious dresses of Pure Magnolia appealed the most  to my over developed feminine side and every single dress seemed to be more beautiful than the last. Even better, all of their designs are eco-freindly!

The well deserved winners of the event were Christopher Bates and Caitlin Power. Along with Pure Magnolia they will be heading to fashion week in Toronto. I even had the pleasure of meeting many of these designers in person after the show and they were all clearly passionate, talented and sincere people.

The event was a brilliant showcase and example of the amazing talent that we have here in Canada and I am so honoured to have been in attendance and to have met fellow fashion & twitter enthusiasts alike.

A huge thank you to all of the lovely designers, Mercedes-Benz, Ogilvie Motors and our nation's capital. I cannot wait until the next event!