Goodwood Revival
Last weekend Palava were lucky enough to return to the fabulous Goodwood Revival – a three-day weekend of classic cars and vintage glamour. Despite being one of largest historic motorsport events worldwide, Goodwood is as well known for the authentic vintage attire sported by its visitors. We were very excited to be selling our dresses to such a stylish and interesting set of customers!
We were set up in the shopping hub at Goodwood - surrounded by a fascinating bunch of stallholders, selling everything from original vintage motorsports memorabilia through to vintage coats, hats, and jewellery. For our little Goodwood shop, we brought back a range of our autumnal prints, alongside our summer dresses. It's always good to give a girl a choice! Our stall was decked out by our experienced visual merchandiser and newest Palava recruit - the wonderful Kara Louise. Didn't she do a fab job?
Some of the autumnal dresses we have re-released are the Ballroom print, our Cocktail print, and our Dancers print. It was lovely to see them out on the rail, and being tried on in our little dressing room by the stylish Goodwood clientele. 
One of our best sellers from the weekend was our Beatrice Teal Ballroom dress. We sent several of these off to their new homes, including the one from our display which caught the eye of a very discerning customer...
We have also brought back our autumn coats! We took our Cocktail coat and our Beauty Pageant coat to Goodwood - and these have both now returned to our website. They have a lovely padded lining and are nice and warm for autumn.
The best things about pop-up events and festivals is the chance to meet the fabulous people who buy our dresses. We certainly are looking forward to doing more of these in the future - nothing beats the magic of a customer fitting perfectly into a Palava dress and falling in love with it on the spot! And nothing is more special than seeing some of the little one's decked out in a Palava dress, hat and petticoat! Does it get more cute?
Here's another happy customer...this little one chose a Blue Dancing Ladies dress - sported with a muddly pair of wellies for the ultimate festival chic!
And here I am with my lovely boss Bryony. We're wearing our favourite autumn Palava prints - Bryony in Cocktail and me in Ballroom. Unfortunately, the weather didn't hold up and we started the weekend with torrential rain! The upside of this was the excuse to get back into autumn tights and petticoats...plus we finished out outfits off with these fabulous sparkly animal ears from our friends Woodstock London. We were lucky enough to be sharing a stall with Charlie of Woodstock - who designs and handmakes all the ears herself. She's a very talented lady!
Here are a few pics of Charlie's side of the stall and the beautiful hair bows and headbands she creates. We collaborate with Charlie on all of our own hair bows - made from the scrap fabric of our production. You can see our full range of hair bows here.
Now for some more of the marvellous Goodwood...one of our favourite places to visit at the festival is Betty's, a beautifully re-created 1950s hair salon. Here you can visit one of their experienced stylists and get yourself an authentic 1940s-1960s hairdo- created with hair rollers, hairspray and plenty of backcombing! We enjoyed visiting and just watching all the magic unfold...
Here's Bryony, pondering which hairstyle to choose!
Inside at Betty's there was magical glow of dressing room lights, vintage fashion magazines and all the hair stylish equiptment of your dreams!
Our very own Kara Louise posing under the amazing vintage hairdryers!
Here's the stylists and customers from Betty's showing off their impeccible style...
The site is also filled with newspaper and program stands, with all staff wearing suitable vintage attire. Check out these two!
The tearoom at Goodwood had colourful bunting and vintage photographs aplenty! We stopped here numerous times for essential tea breaks and eating as much of their delicious lemon drizzle cake as we could manage...the perfect way to reboot after a long day in the shop!
We've talked plenty about the sartorial elegance of Goodwood - but that's not to say our hearts didn't race at the sight of some of the gorgeous classic cars. Here's a little low down of some of our motorsporting highlights from the weekend. These vintage BP petrol pumps are a good place to start...
This little service truck caught Bryony's heart. Doesn't it look fabulous alongside her Palava dress ;-)
And here we were lucky enough to meet one of the race winners! He was such a character. We were particularly impressed with his floral wreath and bottle of champagne!
One of the other special aspects of Goodwood is the funfair, situated a short walk from the main racecourse. We're always partial to a ride on a carousel!
We even ventured on to the Ghost Train. Which we genuinely found quite scary! (We're not used to loud bangs and skeletons appearing out of nowhere!). It certainly gave us the giggles once we were back out in the fresh air.
In addition to classic cars, motorcycles and mopeds are popular at Goodwood. We particularly liked this Lambretta, parked just outside Betty's salon...
And now for some of the serious motors! Cars can only enter a race if manufactured between 1948 – 1966 – the original golden era of racing at the Goodwood racecourse. During this era, sports and Grand Prix cars were raced in events such as the Tourist Trophy and the Glover Trophy. Internationally renowned drivers such as Stirling Moss, Jim Clark and Juan Manuel Fangio all claimed trophies at Goodwood during these years. We can imagine them racing in one of these beauties! 
The Fiat 500s were another highlight...I loved the little red one myself! There was in every colour of the rainbow..
And one final shot from our Palava Goodwood shop...these lovely ladies posed for a picture - we adored their headscarves and aprons!
Despite the wind and rain, we managed to have a wonderful weekend at Goodwood. It was lovely to meet some Palava customers old and new - we are so looking forward to the next one!
Hoping you all have a fabulous start to autumn. Our Autumn/Winter collection is coming soon...it's going to be a good one! Until then, have a look at our final reductions in our end of season sale. There are some extra special bargains to be had. For children, browse the sale here. Enjoy!
