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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.
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!
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.
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.
Apparently, men are more body conscious than they were a decade ago. The evidence is in the mannequin: Homme Nouveau have a shop window dummy that’s just 33 inches round the chest, and Burberry’s new window man is similarly spindly. All this in a time when the average Brit man has a 39 inch waist – yes, waist, not chest!
So how do you manage to look like the slender chaps whom fashion is designed for? It’s the same problem that has beset women for decades: clothes are not designed for average sizes and are modelled by genetic rarities who are taller and slimmer than 90% of the population.
1. Skinny jeans work for almost all men, even the extremely chunky, but you need to make sure that if you are less than slim, you cover up the waist, which can look porky, with a loose fitting V necked T-shirt which slims the body even further
2. Hoodies with a zip rather than a front pocket are slimming and elongating – pick navy blue, grey or black if you’re not the slimmest chap, but go for red, white or beige if you are skinny and proud of it.
But if you are proud of being a big chap, don’t despair. It seems that a ‘robust’ body shape is more popular in times political uncertainty or economic stress – because culturally we are more likely to value men who look as if they can take care of themselves and of others too. Play up your beefy status with bright polo shirts and round necked T-shirts with stripes or ringer details to show off your bulky beauty.
Summer’s favourite colours are usually white and ice-cream shades of pink and blue, and this year is no exception. There may be more ‘rainbow shades’ in the uniforms at the World Cup but at Wimbledon it’s white all the way, and white can be a difficult colour to wear successfully.
For women, white can cause difficulties against a tan, or the lack of one because it can also make a fake tan look well … fake. The answer here is to take a leaf out of Audrey Hepburn’s book and separate the white from your skin with a border of black and white. Either black with white polka dots for the cute type or zebra stripes for the more dramatic look will break down the visual barrier between flesh tones and white, and create a ‘disturbed impression’ ie stop it looking like you’re a plastic Barbie in a tennis outfit.
Men’s problems are different to women’s – white expands the waist and neck and can make you look like you swallowed the ball! Things to avoid:
• white under white unless you are Andy Murray thin – a navy vest or a black T-shirt under a white hoodie will slim you down
• round-necked tops white if you are still winter-pale – a V neck or polo shirt will stop your skin and the white clothing blending together into a ‘lump’
• white against black – unless you’re slim, a white top with black trousers can make you look very top-heavy. Instead try grey or camel coloured trousers or shirts, or faded jeans which will balance the lightness of a white summer shirt.
There are three or four classic summer items that look great if worn properly and terrible if not:
- The white polo shirt – you can wear this under a blazer or linen jacket or much more simply with shorts. It’s a colour that can be worn by men and women and it looks fine on a hot day in the office as well as being suitable for a day on the beach or an evening barbecue. To look after it properly, apply sun lotion and deodorant at least an hour before putting it on so that you don’t get rings and stains from the chemicals in those vital summer toiletries.
- The linen jacket – the unstructured jacket is a summer favourite. It’s cool and light and can be crumpled. It looks good with most things but is at its best with beige or cream trousers or a summer skirt and not so great with jeans, because the difference in weight between the fabrics can make the jacket look skimpy.
- Shorts – wearing summer shorts is an art form and making the right choice can be vital. Capri pants are better for women who have thick ankles and for men with a beer belly, drawstring shorts that reach the knee are much more flattering than elasticated waist shorts that only come to mid thigh. Both sexes tend to look good in cargo shorts, especially in the summer colours: cream, beige, light blue. All shorts look terrible with formal tops like a collared shirt, a structured jacket or a silky top just create a horrible mish-mash of styles that offend the eye. Keep to casual clothing like polo-shirts or summer T-shirts to give your shorts the laid-back vibe.
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.
For the first time in five years, what you wear might be influencing the way people think about you politically. Nick Clegg’s sudden popularity boost may be welcome to the Lib Dems, but, as ever, the political commentary has been at least partly about the colour of the tie each candidate was wearing.
Politicians complain about this frivolousness, but the colour of each political party is an important part of political identity.
• Red has been the colour of the Labour Party since its inception in 1900 because it reflects the radicals of the French Revolution.
• Traditionally, the Tory party used all three colours of the Union Jack: red, blue and white, but when Labour came along and annexed red, it settled for blue alone, which is the colour many Conservative groupings worldwide have also chosen.
• The Liberal Dems seem to be going for gold this time around, although in the past they’ve chosen the brighter shade of orange, both of which hark back Liberal Party from which the new Lib Dems have developed.
• And then there’s the party named after a colour – the Green Party which links its cause to the environment by choosing a colour as its title.
So if you are seen around the workplace in a red tie, people will subconsciously assume you’re a Labour supporter, while your smart blue work shirts suddenly carry an unexpected freight of Tory hinterland. The green spring-like T-shirt that you bought a few weeks ago is no longer ‘Shrek-like’ but suggests environmental associations and your Dad’s favourite shorts in canary yellow are likely to be viewed as his emergence as a nascent Cleggite. If you want to be politically neutral until after 6 May, stick to grey, black and white – grey trousers and a black shirt or jeans and a white hoodie will keep you free of party affiliations.
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