One secondary school in England has decided to change its uniform radically, and claims the new look is a hit with pupils and parents. Students at the Cooper School in Churchill Road, Bucks used to wear purple polo-shirts and black trousers or skirts, but the casual top has been changed into a white shirt, tie and a black blazer. To launch the new uniform, the school gave all students a black and blue striped tie along with a sew-on school badge free of charge. Headteacher Ben Baxter said the decision to change uniform had not been taken lightly, and followed consultation with students, parents, governors and staff. ‘The school firmly believes in the maxim of Look smart, Be smart,’ He said ‘We hope the obvious pride the students are showing will express itself in the level of progress in their learning over the coming year.’ One wonders how the parents will feel when the added laundry costs start to factor into the equation …

And in Ireland The Department of Education has recommended that there be no change in how schools decide their uniform policies. New say the current system, which allows schools decide uniform policy at local level, is reasonable and should be maintained. The guidelines were drawn up after disquiet earlier in the year over the wearing of the Hijab by Muslim students. The guidelines say no school uniform policy should act in such a way that it would exclude students of a particular religious background from the school. Commenting on the guidelines, the Minister for Education said while 92% of schools in the country were under the patronage of one religion, that fact had not … excluded pupils of different religions from these schools.

Purple polo courtesy of safi

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While City executives squirm in the boardroom and have to be bailed out by the treasury, it’s the chavvy, lowly, hoodie and his chippy ladette girlfriend who might possess the superpower that saves retail spending.

Virtually everybody, except a few oil sheiks and barons, is watching their spending and counting their pennies and cents, spending has dropped like a stone down a well, in virtually every area … except one.

J D Sport, one of the retailer that dresses our teen generation has just reported a 54% RISE in their half-year pre-tax profits. Similar spending is expected to show in other teen havens like H&M and topshop, and across the sporting clothing chains generally.

It seems that 16-19 year olds know what they want: quality sportswear and casual clothing and are still willing to pay for it. Hurrah for the hoodie, whose front pocket might still be deep enough to save the high street from a recession!

Hoodie courtesy of JasonRogers

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You may not even know what clothblocking is, but you do it, we all do.  It’s the instantaneous judgement we make about somebody when we first see them and it affects the romantic and job prospects of us all.  Here are the top 5 clothing mistakes that cause an employer, or potential girlfriend, to clothblock a bloke:

1. Designer sunglasses – unless you’re a pimp or a drug dealer.  Seriously, the designer sunglasses wearer has passed beyond metrosexual into the twilight territory of Russell Brand and you don’t want to go there, do you?  Anyway, it’s the first thing your new squeeze will want to do, get you to ditch your Superdrug £4.99 specials for a decent pair of shades, so give her the chance to make you over by starting at zero. And you should never, ever, ever wear sunglasses to an interview, unless it’s for a post in the industry mentioned at 3.
2. Denim shorts – these are called jorts in the USA for jean-shorts.  Why are they such a clothesblock? Well if you google jorts you’ll find out – at least half the responses will be from gay websites or forums: jorts are just very homosexual and girls don’t respond well to them, even though David Dundas wore them in the jeans advert that led to a number 1 hit single.  See 3. again, for the only place you can wear them to an interview.
3. Crocs – neither bosses nor potential life partners are likely to smile at the sight of crocs, unless you happen to be a fishing boat captain and you’ve only just walked ashore.
4. Owning nothing but polo-shirts. The problem with this one is that you’ve misled people – your new employer or your new gf both have every right to expect that you own a couple of shirts, and if you don’t written warnings and stormy walkouts will result – basically if you only own T-shirts and polo-shirts, you’re a slob through and through.  Buy a shirt … and a tie!
5. Sleeveless shirts – if ladies with bingo wings put you off, look down. Armpit hair is a total turn off, in the social and the business environment, and waxing your armpits so you can wear sleeveless shirts is just too weird.  Short sleeves at a minimum, long sleeves in the office are better still.

Crocs courtesy of sailorbill

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Stand bookings for the 2009 Workwear & Corporate Clothing Show organised by are gaining momentum. Compared to last September, stand bookings are up by over 60% and 80% more net space has been sold, showing that this area of British manufacture, trade and retail is on the up.

The 2009 show takes place at Birmingham’s NEC in April 2009 and features a fashion show, sponsored by Russell Europe, a conference, and the Business Manger Awards ceremony which will be hosted by Jeff Banks, famous for his fashion and corporate design. Nominations for the awards have just closed and the list of entrants and judges will be announced shortly.

The associated 2009 Conference will address one of the most important issues facing workwear and corporate garment manufacturers, suppliers, distributors and buyers today: sustainability. It starts on 2nd April and will bring together ten inspiring speakers to present on the three key areas of sustainability: environment, social and economy

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There’s been a scandal about pictures taken of Prince Harry playing polo which were blown up and used by polo and sportswear brand Hackett as part of an advertising campaign. The posters of the Prince were fifteen feet tall and were displayed at the Soto Grande Polo tournament in Spain.

The Hackett brand is a sponsor of the polo tournament, but the posters didn’t mention this, seeming instead to imply that Prince Harry was endorsing the brand’s clothing line. There’s no information yet as to whether Hackett intends to use the picture which shows a moody looking Harry, hands on hips, in a dramatically lit moment, in magazine or billboard advertising.

The Palace has made a strongly worded statement saying that posing for snaps with a sponsor is one thing but ending up ‘on a socking great advert’ is something else. Harry’s Clarence House office also confirmed that the Prince has not been consulted about the use of the image and would not have given his consent.

Prince Harry courtesy of Hackett blog 

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Origins

Ralph Lauren  was  born Ralph Lifshitz in 1939. Despite being best known as the quintessential American fashion designer he studied business and did a stint in the army before establishing his own clothing business.  In 1967 he set up the  Polo label – but it didn’t sell polo-shirts at that point, rather, he was instantly successful with ties! His fashion radar told him that the narrow ties and conventional styles of the time were not appealing to the younger generation and created wide, handmade ties using flamboyant colours, very much in the vein of the hippy movement, but paired with opulent materials rather than the cheap fabrics that the hippies wore.  Because he was trying to promote a lifestyle rather than following a trend, he chose a name for the tie line that he felt embodied discreet elegance and classic style: Polo.

 Signature style

After the ties came general menswear, which is when the polo-shirt first appeared, and, in 1971, a women’s label. The signature style of Ralph Lauren is actually a combination – on the one hand its a chic look, which is supported by good fabric and a lot of classic styling, and on the other hand it’s preppy – aimed at the younger generation who want to look fashionable without looking cheap.  The look extends into sportswear, casualwear and home furnishings and is very American.  The Lauren empire was floated on the US stockmarket in 1997, and includes Polo Ralph Lauren, Polo Sport and the Ralph Lauren Collection.

Why we love him

Ralph Lauren can always tap perfectly into the current media obsession – for example in 1999, he had a walk-on part on TV sitcom Friends and developed this into a deal with NBC to sell the Ralph Lauren lifestyle on the Internet and TV. He said at the time that ‘We don’t only sell clothes.  We are selling a dream and a vision’. The wraparound styling of clothing, accessories and home items means that the Ralph Lauren ‘look’ extends seamlessly into the whole of life, and if you enjoy that look, you can base your whole life around it.

 Dissenting views

This year’s Olympic costumes caused a small furore – Ralph Lauren was accused of making the American team look like ‘rich snobs’ and of promoting his brand too prominently on the black jackets which all bore his white polo horse logo.

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A button-down decision

As if Hurricane Gustav wasn’t enough - teenagers in Lafayette Parish School System in New Orleans have to contend with a sudden clampdown on school uniform policy. The problem has arisen for female students whose uniform is a polo-shirt which should, according to the schools, have a maximum of four buttons. The problem has arisen because the families of the students have bought polo-shirts with eight buttons. Of course it does sound a little over the top as a reaction, but the point is that if a teenage girl unbuttons eight, rather than four, buttons on a polo-shirt, it can be a real distraction from learning for her male classmates!

Counterfeit China goes full circle

Knockoff polo-shirts go full circle from Beijing to Beijing. In a hilarious development, con artists who have been scamming top level polo-shirt retailers have discovered that the polo-shirts they bought in Beijing have gone back there, as top class mementos.

The way it worked was that young men from Britain would go to the huge street stalls of Hong Kong, Shanghai or Beijing where counterfeit Fred Perry, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger polo-shirts are sold. They would buy bagfuls of knockoff jeans, polo-shirts and trainers and take them home, where they would go into upmarket retail boutiques in major towns and buy identical items to the counterfeits they’d picked up in China and then – a day or so later - return to the shop with the real receipt but the fake clothing.

Because they had a perfectly genuine receipt, they would get their money back and have earned a top of the line polo-shirt for the price of a street stall counterfeit. But here’s the funny bit. Those returned clothes would be sent to catalogue shops and outlet stores which sell off seconds and returns for the big brands at tiny fractions of the original price. And who ends up buying them? Well – very often the purchasers are Chinese tourists on holiday in the UK – desperate to stock up on Western brands, so they go home, quite often, with a counterfeit polo-shirt that was probably made only a couple of miles away from their own home and that they could have purchased there for a tenth of the price they paid in the UK.

Label courtesy of sonictk

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