Well it had to happen sooner or later, but I’m really surprised to see Hollister arriving so quickly in Belfast. I’d assumed being across the water from the mainland that it would take longer, but lo and behold, a Hollister hoarding has been erected on the lower level of Victoria Square in Belfast.

The store will apparently be 8200 sq foot, but no word on when it will be opening yet.

I’m a bit sad to be honest, it’s like when McDonald’s first appeared in Scotland (in Dundee, my home town), it took the specialness away from it. However my sister (fashion assistant at Tatler) has kindly agreed to start looking into new and upcoming brands that I can go checking out. Cheers sis! And it will help avoid the whole £20 shipping fee their website charges for shipping (from the US as there’s no from the UK shipping option).

I’ve been aware of Simon Miller Jeans for a while now, ever since I tried to see how my site was doing in Google rankings (not very well unfortunately). Anyways, they are a premium line of very nice jeans from California.

I saw them a couple of weeks ago while perusing the mens’ section in Selfridges. They are quite literally, jeans with my name on them. Unfortunately the price tag is way out of my league – this pair was £260! Now I like my jeans, and I don’t mind paying £100 for a pair of Nudies, but this was a bit too steep for me, even given the name connection (and Miller’s even spelt correctly!). Maybe one day I’ll get to own a pair! Like erm when my salary goes up by like 300% or something.

Hollister – where I get a lot of my clothes when I’m out in Dallas visiting the folks, and recently arrived in this country, which I was a bit disappointed about. Anyways, seeing as I was in London over Christmas, I decided to head out to Westfield and go and check out one of two Hollister stores currently open in the UK (another one is due to open soon at Bluewater in Kent).

It was nightmare – and that’s putting it politely. The photo above is actually Hollister from the outside, with a queue of people that passed the Nike Store next door, waiting to get in. Now that’s fair enough I guess, it’s not their fault if the store is so crowded people have to queue.

Yet not only was the store ridiculously packed on the inside, the service was unbelievably atrocious. After I’d battled to get to the back of the store to check out shirts, I stood at the changing rooms for five minutes before asking someone whether they were open. No, those rooms were not open. So I headed across to the other side fo the changing rooms, where as I waited for twenty minutes to try some stuff on, the queue behind me grew to 14 people.

There were three members of staff looking after three changing cubicles in that area, so why didn’t they just open up the other changing room area as well?

I decided I’d take the shirts, and went to queue to pay. It’s a sign of how mobbed the shop was that by the time I got to the end of the queue, I’d set off the alarms at the exit to the shop with the shirts I was trying to pay for. On my way up the queue, I counted how many people were in it. 37. Thirty seven!

This rather blurred photo doesn’t really do the queue justice. But the queue goes further than the bright light at the back of the photo.

All in all, I walked straight in and picked two shirts up, tried them on and paid for them. That took me over an hour.

Now Hollister can probably get away with this, and their higher prices which is what drives me insane. They must have raked the money in that day, so what incentive is there for them to improve their service?

The only upside to the whole experience was the unbelievably hot girl serving behind the counter.

Ok so I’m a bit behind with this because it happened last week, but Amazon have started selling music downloads – at a discount to iTunes. At the moment, as what I can only presume is a loss-leader to get people to try the service, they’re offering some brand new albums for only £3 – including ones by Kings of Leon, Take That, Girls Aloud, and Snow Patrol (although Miley is £6.49 annoyingly as I’m a bit tempted.)

I might try it to give it a go – I’m tempted because there’s no DRM restrictions on the music, so I can use it how I want, it will play nicely with my iPhone and iPod, and Amazon’s software (a small plug-in type thing) apparently makes it a cinch to copy into iTunes. Normal (i.e. not discounted) albums seem to cost £6.49 compared to iTunes £7.99.

Find the Amazon MP3 store here.

The Westfield London shopping centre opened on Friday. It’s the largest urban shopping centre in Europe, and right across the road from Television Centre, so me and my mate Charlie Brown went to check it out on Friday afternoon (after work of course).

I am annoyed that after Abercrombie, Hollister is now opening shops in the UK. Boo! I buy a lot of clothes there when I am out in Dallas – mainly just t-shirts and polo shirts, but now everyone is going to be wearing them. There is a Hollister in Westfield. So although I was annoyed about them coming to the UK, I was thinking I might drop some cash there anyway. It was not to be however…

The Hollister store (above) was not open yet. So double suck time. It does look bigger than the ones in Dallas though. Hollister have also opened a UK commerce site, which uses some techy system to work out where you are ordering from, and prices accordingly (i.e. doubles US costs). It’s a bit annoying in two respects. First off, postage to the UK is expensive (£20, although this includes duty and VAT fees), and secondly, I can’t order clothes now to be delivered to my parent’s house in Dallas that they can bring home.  Anyway, it looks like I am now going to have to get my clothes in Ruehl when I’m in the US, as at least there aren’t any of them here yet.

As for Westfield London, I like it. It’s super enormous, but the best thing is that there are loads of shops there that are new to me, and that I hadn’t seen before. Like Cos. I can’t think of anymore right now, but there were some others. Charlie and I were there for two hours looking round, but it honestly felt like 20 minutes. I also managed for once to go into All Saints and not buy anything.

If you are in London, definitely go and check out Westfield London, it’s worth it just for the sheer scale of it. However, I did think people were going a bit over the top. There was an orchestra playing and a fashion show (see pic above) and everyone was just standing gawking at it. It’s a shopping centre people, that’s all!

We have a new snazzy shopping centre in Belfast! It is called Victoria Square and it is quite big. G and I went down and checked it out on the opening day on Thursday and it was crazy bonkers with millions of people. I just wanted to wander around and get a feel for the place but it was so massive and so busy I couldn’t see what was going on, so that was a bit annoying.

Overall I am quite impressed with it – it brings two of my favourite shops to Belfast - Urban Outfitters and All Saints. I’m also quite excited about the funky new McDonald’s that’s opening, but it’s not open yet. And that’s part of the problem with Victoria Square – a lot of the units are empty at the moment.

So I’m gonna wait until I’m back from South by Southwest and check it out properly. Hopefully all the numpties will have had a good look around by then and will not get in my way! 

After two and half years, the Egg and Muffin Toaster (of my dreams) has finally made it to the UK, as the Tefal Toast n Egg. That is the good news. The only bad news for me is that it is only available in Comet, who don’t deliver to Northern Ireland. Could that be any more ironic.

However, my Mum has kindly offered to buy one for me and post it over. Yeehah! I shall let you know if I go ahead. Now if only this had been released last month, it would have been perfect timing for my birthday….

I was in London yesterday for a quick visit, meeting two presenters I’m hoping will come and work in Northern Ireland on a summer series. I managed a quick trip to Regent Street, where I was a bit dismayed to see that American clothes retailers are arriving. Banana Republic opens in Spring 2008. Part of the Gap group, I’m not fussed about this one to be honest cos I think their men’s clothes are really dull and boring. However I was extremely annoyed to find out what is already open next door to where BP is going….

Armani Exchange! Where I get all my cool jackets when I’m out in Dallas! So this means everyone will be eventually walking round in the same clothes as me which totally sucks big time. This globalisation has to stop! Booooooo!

If you are a baby, you cannot choose whether or not you want to be religious, so why is there a Baby’s First Bible?!!!

This is some weird animatronic Elvis which is currently on sale at The Sharper Image for only $199.99! Who in their right mind would buy that. Apparently ‘State-of-the-art technologies animate Alive™ Elvis® so he looks, feels, sounds and moves like “The King.”‘ Erm… hello? He’s got NO LEGS! Anyone that buys him should be shot.