My best friend Laura is my favourite kind of company.

She's the first person I turn to for anything: Trouble at work? Laura. Can't decide between a pair of shoes? Laura. Husband hasn't done the washing up again? Laura. We are never not in conversation on WhatsApp, and always looking for an opportunity to mooch around the shops.

So when we both decided to take the first Monday in December off, we had to make sure we had something festive planned. Combined, of course, with our two loves of shopping and eating.

We've both been to Bicester Village before, but separately. Her husband knows how to shop, whereas mine... not so much, so I was desperate to go back with someone who's more than happy to spend a couple of hours looking at luxury shoes and bags. (Emphasis on the 'looking at...'; there's nothing like going to Bicester Village to make you realise how NOT RICH you are.)

We hopped in the car and set off on the 2 hour journey to the pretty Oxfordshire countryside. I always love our country at this time of year and I'm always up for exploring new villages and places. English holidays are the best kind. I want to soak up the atmosphere of this beautiful country, especially at Christmastime.


If you haven't been to Bicester Village before, let me set the scene: characterful buildings, boutique shops and eateries, and lots of pretty clothes, shoes and bags to lust over. It's a designer outlet complex, so you'll find luxury brands like Gucci, Mulberry, Prada and so on, selling stock at discounted prices. Win! Complete with twinkling Christmas lights and a nice frosty day, it was the perfect way to get us into the festive spirit.



Our first stop of the day: coffee and breakfast at the Farmshop by Soho House. Probably as close to Soho House as we'll ever get, we soaked up the atmosphere with delicious coffee, fresh orange juice, a pastry for Laura and avo on toast for me. We mapped out our day - I was after a very specific Gucci bag, and Laura wanted to pick up some Christmas presents for her husband - then off we set into the shops.

There are a few new additions since we both last visited; the boutiques are always changing so it's always nice to go and see new things. As luck would have it, it also happened to be 'Cyber Monday'; something we hadn't considered when planning our trip. It was fairly busy, but not overly so, and it meant that a lot of the boutiques had fantastic sales on.


As wonderful as I think Bicester Village is, I do feel like I should say that it can be quite soul destroying if you're not up for spending loads of money. There are people who take suitcases and fill them up with all of the luxury goods they buy. There are people dropping thousands upon thousands of pounds without flinching. After a couple of hours of simply looking at stuff, we both started to flag a little bit. There are some 'cheaper' shops such as Ralph Lauren, Sandro, The Kooples and All Saints and they all had some lovely bits, but nothing that caught our eye (except a Sandro skirt for Laura, but that's another story entirely...)

The Gucci bag I wanted wasn't available, but I'd had my eye on a Mulberry purse which I'd actually been wanting for quite some time. So before we headed back to the car, we popped into Mulberry and I treated myself. With an extra 20% off in the Mulberry shop, the purse was £160 - probably the cheapest I'll ever get a brand new stunning Mulberry purse, so I can certainly justify it this close to Christmas.


Instead of heading home early, we then decided to hop over to the Cotswolds. But that's a blog post for another time... stay tuned to hear all about our visit to Daylesford Farm!

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