CODE DOES... Parklife Festival

This weekend just gone I was lucky enough to celebrate the beginning of summer with a trip to Parklife Festival, a two day multi genre music festival that takes place at Manchester’s Heaton Park.

Here’s some of my highlights…

Music - At a festival it can be pretty impossible to see everyone you want to, so I was pleased that despite a few scheduling clashes, I was able to catch most of my favourites. Frank Ocean was the act everyone was talking about this year, impressed that a festival that was once pretty niche could pull such a huge international artist. While Frank’s music isn’t really my style, I’m glad that I got to go to his set as his voice really is beautiful and the atmosphere was amazing, taking place on the Sunday night it was the perfect set to wind everyone down.

As a lover of UK garage and grime, I had the most fun at Boy Better Know on the Saturday night and Wiley early Sunday evening. Both acts were jam packed and really got the crowd going with their upbeat tunes, I have had the opportunity to see both these acts live before and they never fail to impress.

Other notable acts for me were DJ’s Fatima Yamaha (a favourite of mine who I recommend you check out) and the more well-known Arman Van Heldan.

Fashion – Every time I go to a music festival I am amazed the wonderful variety of style that I see. Despite the (very grim) weather, the people of Parklife really put a lot of effort into their clothes, I saw a whole lot of colour and interesting fabrics. Due to the rain, people were finding inventive ways to show of their style. One thing I saw a lot of was brightly coloured holographic raincoats, like this one from TopShop. I will definitely be picking up one of these for my next festival. 

There was also a lot of fancy dress, which looks great and is a fab conversation starter if your brave enough to try it. There were ravers dressed in everything from fairy wings to cat ears and it was lots of fun to see what you could spot.

Beauty - I brought my own makeup with me and kept it natural with light base makeup. My VLM Mini was an absolute lifesaver, it’s travel size meant I could pop it in my bum bag and build up the coats to take my look from day to night. However, the best thing was it didn’t smudge a single bit in the pouring rain, after 12 hours in the elements it looked as good a new! You can check out a full list of my festival essentials here 

I also wore glitter around my eyes and on my cheekbones and as is typical for a festival, everyone was covered in sparkle, from every colour of the rainbow. I temporarily dyed my hair pink for the weekend but I was super envious of the cool hairstyles I saw, the most popular being double buns. If you want to try this look, here’s some great tutorials.

If your planning for summer 2018 and are looking for a great festival that really does have something for everyone, I strongly recommend that you check out Parklife. I’m sure you will love it as much as me!