Last Saturday my best gal pal and I jumped into the car for a road trip to Leeds. The reason for our journey? The brand new Topshop which has recently opened and is, wait for it, the largest Topshop outside of London. If you're a Yorkshire lady and love Topshop as much as me then no doubt you've checked it out but if you're anything like me you might find the whole experience a little overwhelming. Similar to visiting other huge Topshops (I'm looking at you Oxford Street) there's lots of floors, so much to see and hundreds of other girls doing exactly the same thing so when I heard that the new Topshop would be offering the personal shopping service, my local Topshop doesn't do it, I knew I had to take my bestie along and try it out.

We booked our appointments via email a few weeks before and were each asked to fill in a consultation style form- these help your stylist get an idea of what you're looking to achieve from your appointment. It'll come as no surprise to my regular readers that I listed both Olivia Palermo and Millie Mackintosh as fashion favourites! On arriving at Topshop we made our way down to the ground floor where the Personal Shopping suite is located, I'd scoped out it's location on previous visit (a clear sign of a Topshopaholic). After checking in at the reception area we made ourselves comfortable on the huge sofa and indulged in some light fashion reading before our appointment began.

Not long after we'd got cosy we were greeted by our stylist Emily- sporting a chic monochrome outfit. She walked us over to our fitting room- number two in case you were wondering and began to talk us through the pieces she'd picked and how she'd style them. This was really enjoyable as you could tell Emily had a real passion for the pieces she'd pulled and there was more than a nod to Olivia Ps style (yes!) My disappointment however was that both me and the bestie were sharing a fitting room, the rails of clothing and our stylist Emily. As we'd booked the appointments separately and our appointment was just an hour long I'd expected us to have a stylist each as well as our own fitting room with rails of clothes galore. Sure we have similar sense of style but by no means are we the same- the bestie loves black and muted tones while I love nothing better than bright colours and pattern that's before we even get to body shape or clothes size. 

Needless to say we both embraced the set up and had a real giggle trying everything on- I even created a few looks for Gem and she only bought one black item, result! I worked through the two rails very quickly so not long after our initial chat with Emily we all walked the shop floor to find even more pieces. Unsurprisingly we found a fair bit and really began to play dress up with our new finds and hand picked pieces. Emily kept checking in on us to see how we were doing and if we needed any more options or sizes.

After much debating I decided on Mawi-esque necklace which stood out to me as soon as Emily showed it. I also bought a white basic jersey top which is a speckled cotton and is longer at the back than the front, the perfect layering piece. You can see the gorgeous Tiny Twisst sporting the same top in black here. I did have my eye on a longline green tartan blazer but at £68 I just couldn't justify my love and sadly it remained on the rail. All of our purchases (Gemma had a few more than me) were wrapped in tissue and popped in a chic white paper Topshop bag. We even avoided the queues as the personal shopping suite has it's own till- Brucey bonus!

So the all important question...would I use the personal shopping service again? Hell yes! To have someone pre pick items for you is an invaluable service as it encourages you to try pieces you wouldn't have before (I'm looking at you tartan blazer) plus the luxury of having a huge fitting room, no till queues and someone popping to get you different sizes or colours is brilliant. Our stylist had our sense of style down to a tea although I didn't feel as though as I was being pulled kicking and screaming out of my comfort zone, something which I was hoping for. In all honesty I think a stylist should only have one client at a time and Topshop should certainly address this... styling for one is a full time job.

Have you ever used the Topshop personal shopping service? What did you think?