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There are some items that men hate to see a woman wearing, and some they find incredibly appealing – are you wearing the boyfriend attractors or the man repellers? What men hate:
Sloppy boyfriend jeans that hide a female’s shape
Why – because they conceal the femininity of all women and render them graceless
Faded outsized T-shirts
Why – because they suggest that you don’t care how you look and have no interest in your appearance
What they love:
Rugby shirts – especially oversized ones
Why – because they make you look feminine and fragile and the button front offers a hint of feminine cleavage without looking trashy.
How to wear them – choose a hooped pattern if you are slim as it adds an illusion of curviness to your shape, but choose a solid colour rugby shirt with contrast collar if you are on the larger side as it’s more slimming. Try wearing a rugby shirt with leggings or for warm summer afternoons, push the sleeves up and team your shirt with a pair of tailored shorts to show off your legs.
Tailored jackets and fleeces
A casual jacket that nips your waist and flatters your colouring makes you look natural and relaxed and that appeals to any man who’s looking for a date who is confident about herself and enjoys having fun.
How to wear them – pick a shade that looks good against your skin and try to stay away from black unless you’re going to be wearing a bright scarf that enhances your skin tone.
In September many little ones will enter school for the first time – and their parents are likely to be counting the pennies more than any year of school-age parents for a generation. Here are some tips that can make the first day easier, and less expensive, than you might be expecting:
• Stationery – being able to reveal a fantastic set of kit: pens and paper, post-its and erasers from the bowels of a good bag can make the difference, on day one between top of the class popularity-wise and not even achieving mini-geek status. Make sure your kids like what you’re providing and that you can tell what’s fashionable – last year’s Harry Potter is not as good as this year’s Hunger Games!
• Snacking – today many schools are tough about food – find out what high protein snacks you can include in their bag so they can boost their blood sugar if they start to feel a bit exhausted.
• Clothing – while there is usually a clothing list, try to see what other kids are wearing on the first day: many items can be incredibly expensive if you buy through the school shop, but identical items are often available online. In addition, looking at what’s being worn by more senior years can help you invest in items that your child will need in future. If you can make a guess at what size your little one will be next year, you can often get clothing like socks and underwear, or even shirts, at an excellent price, especially in online sales.
Researchers at Southampton University have revealed their plans to develop clothing fabric that generates electricity through wearers’ movement and body heat. At it’s current level of generation, the technology is strong enough only to power individual items such as MP3 players but could soon be developed enough to support wireless health-monitoring systems such as those used in people with sleep apnea, epileptic fits or heart conditions.
One place that it might be used once is reaches a level where it can be aggregated is universities, to power campus equipment.
In the meantime, and before your university offer depends on your electricity generating status as well as your grades, if you’re one of the lucky teens who got a university place this year, what clothing should you be packing?
• Sports socks – Not smart but warm and cosy. Worn with the ubiquitous crocs they can provide full protection against the cold and the lurking nasties to be found on communal bathroom floors.
• Jog pants – The ‘tracky’ might be low-grade but it’s ultra comforting: on days when you don’t have to appear in public, like essay deadline days, they can be what you wear from waking, through faking, to breaking and calling the campus helpline in tears.
• Hoodie – Wonderful item, practical, fashionable and totally annoying to lecturers. Don’t invest in the university shop ones though: they mark you out as a fresher and a fool because they cost about twice as much as from anywhere else.
• Beanie – Great for shoving on when you haven’t washed your hair and you don’t want to give the grunge vibe. Also good for when you decided at 2 am that it was a good idea to shave/dye/straighten your hair and it didn’t work.
Beijing artist Li Xiaofeng makes ‘porcelain clothing’ by sewing together shards of pottery recovered from China’s thousands of archaeological digs and fixing them onto leather garments. The fragments date from the song, ming, yuan and qing dynasties and are stored in dustbins in the artist’s studio. Li had his first exhibition outside China in 2009 and has become one of the many Chinese artists working with major fashion designers on ‘artfusion’ or ‘artketing’ – a blend of art and marketing.
Li has been working with Lacoste, where he constructed a porcelain polo shirt with the classic Lacoste logo, and went on to design a limited edition polo shirt with a signature image of blue and white porcelain pieces scattered on the garment.
Li is not the only Chinese artist to get into the casual clothing world: Comme des Garçons invited Ai Weiwei, to design a special-edition T shirt to commemorate their new store in Hong Kong – the T-shirt couldn’t be sold in China because Ai Weiwei is so controversial there.
If you want to get into the Chinese fashion vibe, but can’t afford the small fortune required for one of the limited edition pieces, focus on the colours blue, white and terracotta for your casual clothing and combine casual polo-shirts or T-shirts with jade medallions worn on a leather thong: a very traditional Beijing look!
If you need to buy new shirts, here’s a few tips to help you get the very best look for you:
Decide on the purpose of your shirt
Is it for work or pleasure? Do you usually wear jeans or a skirt? Choosing one shirt that you hope will ‘do’ for everything generally means that you end up with a garment that achieves nothing. Some shirts are specially designed to work with casual fabrics, while others are particularly shaped to fit under the jacket of a formal suit. Getting the right shirt for the situation can be 90% of looking good.
Measure yourself
A lot of shirts for women are measured in dress sizes, but knowing your arm length and actual chest measurement can help you pick a truly well-fitting shirt online.
Choose the right fabric blend
Pure cotton is beautiful to wear, hard-wearing and requires quite a lot of ironing. Cotton blend can be easier to launder but perhaps is a little less comfortable to wear.
Choose the best style
If you are large-busted, a shirt with bust darts and a looser sleeve, maybe even a short sleeve, can be very attractive. For smaller busts, a slim-fitting tailored shirt looks elegant, and the lightest possible colour will give you extra dignity.
If you have either fat or skinny arms, try to choose long sleeves and don’t roll them up.
If you’re on the plump side, a shirt that harmonises with or matches your trousers or skirt will elongate you, and a shirt with a fishtail or round tail is more slimming than a straight hemmed shirt bottom.
The ‘back to school’ aisles of the supermarkets are bulging already – in fact the very day that schools break up, the shops seem to put up posters reminding their parents that the next term is less than two months away! With cuts being made in school budgets, it’s likely that parents are going to be asked to find more money and that probably means buying more school kit and equipment, more funds for school trips and events, and less free services. Save money by using the opportunities on offer now to buy well in advance. Students can also save big money by focusing their attention on what’s available now.
Buying school uniform can be expensive, and ensuring your child is always properly dressed can be stressful but you can improve your chances of making school days easier by investing in some ‘substitute clothing’ such as plain polo shirts or cotton shirts in the same colour as the ones with the school logo so that if none are put out to wash, you can shove the delinquent into a similar enough piece of clothing to probably get away with it for one day.
Sportswear isn’t just a tick box on a list. Getting enough T-shirts, polos, vests, shorts and track trousers can really make the difference between children taking part in healthy activity and sitting on the sidelines. Whatever the suggested amount of sports clothing, buy double, that means there’s never any ‘my PE kit is in the wash’ excuse for your kids! It may seem harsh, but getting the exercise habit may be one of the best investments you can make for your children.
If your child is entering university, treat them to a formal shirt and jacket for open days and careers fairs. We’re told that there are fewer jobs for graduates and that there will be ever more competition for them, so giving your student offspring a chance to dress their best for the days that they might meet and impress a potential employer could save you many years of having them lounging around at home on Job Seekers Allowance!
Apparently, according to the outdoor living magazine Grough, mountaineering and fell-walking clothing is topping the sales in the high street. Debenhams Menswear Director told the magazine, ‘Men and women have fallen in love with the rugged outdoor image the hill-climbing clothing style portrays.’
It’s called the Wainwright look, after Alfred Wainwright, whose seven-volume life work, named the Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells has become a reference book, as has his guidebook to the first ever Coast to Coast Walk, a 192-mile footpath guide that he created himself.
So how do you get the Wainwright look?
Choose layered clothing in natural and neutral colours with belts or waist detailing to get that classic post-war fell-walking impression. The look is likely to be a big hit this autumn, so spend the summer looking out for cream and beige long-sleeved T-shirts, green, grey and brown jackets and soft cotton trousers that can be worn with hiking boots.
T-shirts were not traditional Wainwright apparel, men preferring to wear a string vest under a shirt in cold weather, so the look requires a cream, pale yellow, grey or pale blue polo-shirt rather than a modern Tee.
Women should look out for canvas skirts and fitted linen shirts, worn with soft jackets or cream trousers or shorts.
The recent burst of telecommuting is damaging fashion sense, according to a number of fashion pundits. They blame the ability to work from home for the way that both men and women have been letting their clothing standards drop.
Some supermarkets have taken to banning customers in pyjamas from shopping because it can offend. They claim that it’s because customers have got used to shopping online in their pjs and now expect to be able to do the same in person.
It’s just one sign that business-casual is devolving into ‘anything goes’ but for those who hope to travel up the career ladder it’s a dangerous path. Companies have taken complex dress codes and turned them into ‘use your best judgement’ but for savvy employees, owning a good pair of trousers or a skirt, a smart shirt and a decent pair of shoes is still the minimum requirement. If your CEO suddenly turns up in your home town and the company want you to drop off some papers or take him or her a memory stick, then you need to look right. And for those who work in ‘back offices’ it may be tempting to wear shorts, flip-flops and casual teeshirts but if you tend to look sloppy and unprofessional, you may fail to win promotion.
Find a middle path by wearing polo-shirts instead of T-shirts, lightweight casual trousers instead of shorts and simple pumps or even this year’s fashion winner, high-top trainers, instead of flip-flops.
Oddly enough, women tend to spend a lot more on clothes than men, but paradoxically, they actually have more ways to change the appearance of their clothing than men do, so strictly speaking, they should need to buy less items!
For summer clothing, women can change the appearance of a T-shirt or polo-shirt by using a scarf, either round the neck as a contrasting colour, or twisted to make a casual belt around the waist, or tied in the hair as a floaty pony tail accessory that harmonises with the colour of your top. Women can can also wear waistcoats over T-shirts, especially long sleeve T-shirts, to ring the changes on their wardrobes.
Both men and women can wear a summer vest T-shirt over a long sleeve T-shirt, or use a contrasting vest under a hoodie to make a colour contrast that can make a familiar piece of clothing look totally different.
Men may like to try wearing more formal clothing with shorts, and less formal with trousers: often they tend to stick to vests with shorts, lightweight polo-shirts with trousers but swapping those over you can develop a whole new look with the same clothes.
Women in particular know that a summer look combines style and comfort, and long sleeved T-shirts can be a real boon, especially when British weather can be so unpredictable.
This year the look is very much long sleeve T-shirt with maxi skirts, as an alternative to the maxi dress, or alternatively, relaxed fit long sleeved T-shirts with Capri pants for a cute but not too casual appearance. If the weather really turns nasty, you can even layer a short sleeved T-shirt or a pretty vest over a long sleeved one, to add warmth without bulk. Plain long sleeve T-shirts look especially good with a bold tribal or bright summery necklace as the round neck can make a simple setting for dramatic jewellery.
They are a particularly good choice to wear for work in summer, because they can look smart without being too frilly. Team long-sleeved T-shirts with lightweight trousers for a good casual office look, and pack a pair of shorts in you bag so that you can change into them and catch a few rays in your lunch break.
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