all you gotta do is smile

Today is the last day for you to enter the #WearASmile competition brought to you by Colgate Optic.  R20 000 shopping spree and a Cosmo cover - which means hair and make up and stylist and  everyone faffing over you for the day... Who could say no that?! And all you have to do is post a picture of yourself smiling on www.opticwhite.co.za/enter. How easy is that? Even a selfie will do, and if you struggle to take good selfie's this post which features advice from Nigel Barker of America's Next Top Model might help you.

shoot diaries: bow down

Styled a shoot with Bonang Matheba last week for her publicity images with photographer Nick Bolton and hair and make up artist Nthato Mashishi.  Head wraps, sheer panels, gold belts, Avant Apparel, turbans, necklaces worn as crowns on head... just some of the things we did to make this shoot look amazing. Can't wait to see the final images. Can you? Are you with me?

stylemology wins with their 'chat > online' feature

Last night, after seeing Catherine Grenfell from 5FM in a dress she had bought from Stylemology at a 5FM publicity shoot earlier that day, I decided to give into my desire to shop from my bed in my pyjamas by logging onto Stylemology and giving into the words 'SALE' in red. After going berserk in the sale section, even putting an item or two in my 'bag' for the BF, I eventually proceed to 'checkout' only to find that all my sale items were full price. So I removed all the items from my bag, slightly disappointed that I wasn't going to be receiving a present that I paid for at the door in 48 hours. I thought, let me tweet Stylemology to let them know about this faux pas, because that is what we do now when we have an issue with a service provider...we tweet them. But something inside of me decide that opening a new tab and tweeting them wouldn't solve my problem or give me an answer to the issue right away, so I clicked on the 'chat > online' link and proceeded to have this chat with Shalini from Stylemology:

Please wait for site operator to respond.

You are now chatting with 'Shalini'

Shalini: Hit Thithi

Thithi: Hi Shalini. I just tried to buy off the sale items and the total of rather the prices of the items at check out were the full retail price

Thithi: Is the sale over?

Shalini: How can I help you?

Thithi: Oh sorry Shalini - typed before seeing your question

Shalini: No problem

Shalini: One moment please

Shalini: Thank you for your patience Thithi. The sale is still on.

Thithi: Oh okay

Thithi: Well that is super weird, because I shopped from the sale and then when I got to check out the items were full retail price

Shalini: I will send through a request to have it corrected.

Thithi: Alright.Well hopefully the items I want don't disappear

Shalini: So rather not proceed with the purchase until it has been corrected.

Shalini: Please confirm which item you wish to purchase?

Thithi: Just quickly having a look again

Shalini: It will be corrected in the morning and we can email or phone you as soon as we are informed of the corrected prices

Shalini: sure, take your time :)

After travelling to New York, I realised that South African's accept terrible customer service all the time and that we dish out terrible customer service. In this past week (and it is only Wednesday), I have experienced sitting at a restaurant and having the waiters ignore me, store assistants in a big budget retailer pretending not to see me when I was waiting outside the changerooms which they locked up because the store was quiet and none of them wanted to wait around and a bar tender aggressively demand a tip from me after he took his time serving me. 

So, having a service like the one Stylemology has is amazing to me as a consumer. I am impressed that at 23:30 I was able to get a quick response with regards to my query via the simple conversation above. I have now bought into Stylemology. Cool videos you can shop from are cool, look books with sexy models are sexy, but good old fashion customer service is immeasurable.