When Small is Beautiful - Your next Cashmere Wrap or Weekender

On the train a couple of days ago I was having a look on Facebook and spotted someone who had fallen in love with these bags, by Hempleman. Having known the lady who runs Perilla for quite a while, and who also knows just about everything anyone would need to know about cashmere and, more particularly alpaca, I thought I'd tell you about her.

Sandra runs a small website with an extremely eclectic, carefully chosen range of luxury products, including the aforesaid Hempleman Monaco bags, really gorgeous cashmere shawls and wraps, alpaca socks in gift boxes, covetable Swarovski crystal evening bags (as in I want one, but then I want most of what's here) and alpaca felt berets.

This is not a sophisticated website, as you'll see when you click through, and could do with a few tweaks, however the products are superb and some are hard to find anywhere else. It's one of those conundrums of online when you have some very good products but you're running your website as a kind of sideline, and all the others are spending a fortune and speeding away.

In this case you need to think of Perilla as a destination store, where you know you'll always find a treat and Sandra already has so many loyal customers anyway she won't be doing anything radical soon. Buy from her. I don't say that often, we all know who the big players are, but small websites with big hearts and great products are few and far between.

You may have missed my tweet yesterday about Vente-Privee but you should rush to the website and see if the Rodial sale is still on (I think it ends tomorrow) Rodial is a superb innovative skincare brand and Vente-Privee have a sale on at half price - for current products! I'm safe to let you there as I've bought mine already.

In case you don't know about Vente-Privee they are the pioneers and European leaders in online event based sales. Sign up to them now. By the way just about all the Luella bags have now gone, I have to confess I was sad to see that sale.

For Valentine's Day VP have launched VPgift, a new service allowing members to purchase electronic gift vouchers - is anyone listening out there? I'd like one of those! My kids think that Valentine's Day is just for them (aged 19 to 22), but I don't, my NY resolution was to have more fun, which I'm already doing I can tell you now, and Valentine's Day is surely part of that!