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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.
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.
In Mansfield Ohio, a new detailed dress code has been drafted for court staff – it’s meant to ‘inspire confidence and respect from the public, create a professional image and install a sense of pride in city government’.
So municipal employees will be denied lip piercings and excessive tattoos. Jeans and T-shirts will be limited to Friday only in office areas.
In the USA any rules about dress codes must be careful not to infringe on First Amendment rights and religious freedoms and Casual Friday has become a contentious issue, because it’s a test of what is acceptable or not – can you wear a shirt, tie and smart jacket on Dress Down Friday if you’re Mormon or is that seen as a non-team choice? Can you turn up in a T-shirt with an overtly religious or controversial sporting message or is that somehow also against the spirit of teamwork?
This is why many companies prefer to impose casual uniforms which are usually a soft-collared top such as a polo-shirt, worn with the employee’s choice of skirt, trousers or jeans. This allows issues of gender, age and cultural equality to be balanced with health and safety issues.
There’s no doubt that the dictates of catwalk fashion don’t rule menswear – remember David Beckham and his World Cup sarong? Yes, and how many chaps actually have a skirt in their wardrobes now? Exactly.
But some designer fashion does spill over, although it does it slowly and it hangs around longer. For the third year in a row we are seeing bright colours in menswear on the catwalks, and that means bright colours in male clothing in the shops and offered through online retailers.
This year Calvin Klein went for blues and oranges, in a sort of cubist block style, and Paul Smith, who has always had a tendency towards the ‘dressed in the dark’ approach to colour, went for a wild palette of light and dark blues, purples, and reds. So we can expect to see lots more bright T-shirts, light and striped shorts and colour contrasts between shirts and jackets in the year ahead. If you’re not confident about colour, choose your bright shade and match it with grey, so grey shorts and a yellow vest, or an orange hoodie worn with grey trousers, as grey will tone down anything too bright, while black will tend to make it look brighter.
According to the Ralph Lauren style guide, every woman should have five essential items in her wardrobe:
- Classic polo shirt – this shirt, usually in a RL colour such as pink and white, or mint and lavender, or just pure plain white or baby blue, is teamed with any casual item of lower body clothing such as jeans, shorts or a casual skirt.
- Skinny-fit polo – this tailored look works with more polished clothing such as fitted trousers or a heavyweight skirt in wool or silk. Often worn with boots and a tailored jacket by WASP girls in the USA.
- Traditional Oxford shirt – this versatile wardrobe classic can be dressed down to wear with jeans if you put a form-fitting T-shirt or vest underneath and wear trainers, while with dress trousers and a fitted jacket, especially if teamed with a smart handbag, it’s suitable for an interview or smart lunch date.
- Lightweight sweater – Ralph Lauren says this is a great layering piece that can elegantly accompany any basic.
- Jeans in stretch denim – these are the final components of the RL look and he suggests that you choose from a sophisticated dark dye look or the faded style for a more casual look.
Women often feel that they are disadvantaged in the workplace: if they dress dowdily they are overlooked for promotion or interesting tasks, but if they dress attractively they earn envy and resentment and may be taken less seriously!
If it seems that you can’t win, there is a simple solution that helps you stand out, without putting you at risk of being considered either frivolous or tarty. The answer is to combine your wardrobe to hit two different targets in each outfit.
This means everything you wear should be meet one of these three aims.
• Combine bright colours and neutral ones
• Mix floral prints with geometric ones
• Always balance any feminine touches (such as frills) with and masculine details such as tailoring and fitted clothing.
How do you do it? Well if you wear a white or blue plain work shirt, for example, you can team it with a flounce-hemmed skirt as that’s a nice mixture of feminine and masculine.
Chosen a pair of formal black trousers? Why not match them with a red or yellow jacket that has a contrast trim or a bright detail to meet the bright/neutral colour target?
If your bag is ‘girly’ or pretty, carry a formal black leather wallet to balance it out.
And if you’ve got a striped or contrast trim polo shirt, why not pair it with a floral patterned skirt to achieve the floral/geometric balance?
While this way of dressing takes a little bit of getting used to, it produces the right effect by allowing you to dress so that you stand out from the crowd, without being pigeonholed in a way that doesn’t further your career.
Polo-shirts are popular and comfortable and most people, men in particular, are very happy to wear them, but how do you make a polo-shirt work if you’re going from daytime wear to an evening out?
First, remember that a polo-shirt is unlike a T-shirt because it has a collar. The lack of a collar is one reason that utilitarian T-shirts are often classed as work-wear, rather than smart clothing.
Polo shirts are also more flexible in the way they can be worn from workplace, to dinner, and on to a night out. The weave of a polo-shirt is designed to keep the wearer cool and the collar can be turned up to prevent sunburn – this is often derided if you do it when the sun goes down though, so don’t ‘pop’ your collar unless you are actually working outside in the day.
To dress up a polo shirt from day to evening, choose a shirt in a muted colour such as grey, navy, black or beige and then, for the evening, add a multi-coloured belt or one that’s got detailing such as studs or an intricate buckle that adds interest to your overall appearance.
Wear something as casual as a polo with a formal or semi formal jacket made from linen or wool. A smart shirt can be worn with a more casual jacket or fleece but if you combine casual with casual the appearance can be two laid-back to satisfy restaurants or night clubs.
It’s becoming more difficult to find a job, so here are three top tips on how to survive the world of work:
Pen and paper, not mobile
Write down the names of people you meet and tasks you are given. Nobody will expect you to remember everything. But don’t use your mobile or laptop to check your email or surf the web, or even to store the names and numbers of your new colleagues – many companies worry about the way staff use the web now and looking like a net surfer in your first week can suggest you are not serious about your new job. Leave your phone and laptop in your bag and only use them when you are out of the office at lunchtime.
Dress Code
Remember what you wore for interview? Make sure you have enough clothes to dress similarly for your first week of work – this should be smart trousers with a short or long-sleeved shirt for men, and a skirt and shirt for women. On Friday a lot of people may dress down into polo-shirts or T-shirts but don’t assume that dressing down is your right – it’s better to ensure that you are over rather than underdressed in that first week, and also, over-dressing allows you to be dressed formally enough to cope with anything that’s thrown at you. It’s quite common for companies to take on new staff in weeks when the senior managers are all on leave or at conferences and that can mean that everybody relaxes their dress code. Come Monday, you might be the only person who is casually dressed and the returning bosses will not be happy!
Scent
Remember to avoid wearing perfume, aftershave, or body sprays that might affect others – in your first week you’ll probably have other people hovering over you a lot of the time, checking how you’re doing, and if your scent irritates them, you’ll soon be an unpopular colleague.
Everybody wears cotton clothing – babies are popped into it from birth because of its softness, its breathability and the way that it can take heavy laundering (therefore its absolute cleanliness can be guaranteed). Baby clothing is, quintessentially, cotton clothing.
Once we grow up we move into the kind of rugged cotton clothes that our mothers can wash and wash and wash – whether it’s sports gear for the budding footballer or gymnast, or short-sleeved T-shirts for the incipient artist or junior trainspotter. This cotton wear is wash-and-wear style, in bright colours and is often the kind of garment that a child will fall in love with and insist on wearing all the time. It’s a good thing it’s tough!
And as we become adults, we moving into our own fashion preferences: brilliant white shirts worn for interviews, brand new black T-shirts to impress the opposite sex at the weekend, comfy hoodies for weekend meet ups.
Caring for Cotton
While cotton is robust, you can do quite a lot to keep it looking better for longer. Deep colours benefit from being washed inside out – especially if they have transfer designs on them. Light colours take almost any amount of laundering, but be careful not to wash them with anything dark, or they are likely to pick up a tint of the darker colour.
Cotton or Poly-cotton?
The choice isn’t as simple as you might think. Pure cotton has advantages – it becomes more comfortable the more it’s worn, and you can iron it on a very high heat without destroying it. It holds its dye colour well too. On the down side, it does crease quite badly.
Poly-cotton doesn’t crease nearly so badly, but it does have a tendency to pill, which is where the fabric makes tiny bobbles over time. Also it can’t be washed on as high a temperature as 100% cotton can.
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