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It turns out that employers and Human Resources departments are googling candidates for employment or promotion and checking out their Facebook pages to see what they say about themselves.
Uploaded photos are considered to be a good indicator of a person’s view of themselves, because that’s what they’ve chosen to show the world – so those dodgy pictures of you (male) in a mankini or (female) taking part in a wet T-shirt contest, might be doing you real harm in the career stakes.
On the other hand, smart casual clothing, a big smile and photographs in which you’re just one figure in a big group can all enhance your employment prospects because the right clothing, a happy face and a big circle of friends all tend to convince the viewer that you’re adaptable, popular and intelligent.
So what should you wear in your Facebook profile picture to get a job? A fresh polo-shirt and chinos is the favoured look for the under forty male, while the under forty female should choose a dress or skirt (the skirt should cover her knees and the sleeves of her top should cover her shoulders, but it appears any amount of cleavage doesn’t influence an employer).
It’s even more important for the over forties – men shouldn’t wear a tie because it looks ‘old and sad’ and should have their shirtsleeves, if long, rolled up a few inches to suggest they are active and practical, not stuffy and hierarchical – soft shirts are preferable to stiff starched ones. Women should ensure they don’t show bingo arms or appear in ‘mother of the bride’ type dresses – jeans are good for slim older women, and the more casual the clothing they can get away with, the better, so a contemporary T-shirt with well-fitting jeans would be ideal.
For all ages, it’s important to look fit and healthy, so pictures taken out doors in sports clothing, are a good idea, as long as they aren’t your profile picture – even a blurry picture of the back of your jacket as you walk the dog on a rainy day is enough to give a potential employer the impression that you’re dedicated to doing your duty.
Recent psychological research suggests that to impress a new prospective partner, you should not go all out with special clothing on your first date.
Instead, you should focus on where you met and what you were both wearing, and then upgrade that clothing just one level. So if you met in a library and you were wearing a polo-shirt and jeans, your upgrade might be to a comfortable shirt and jeans and the ideal date location might be a museum or gallery.
If, on the other hand, you met playing football in the park, in shorts and a vest, you might want to upgrade that sports clothing to a pair of casual trousers and a fun printed T-shirt and arrange a date to watch a sporting event.
The idea is that people agree to go out with other people for the first time when they feel comfortable with them, so if you escalate your clothing out of their comfort zone of your new mate, you cause what psychologists cause a ‘disconnect’ between the two versions of you that they are exposed to.
Women are particularly prone to this, and turn up for first dates in sparkly dresses and high heels when they were previously wearing jeans and a feminine hoodie, causing their poor date to think somebody else has turned up in their place! This means that the activities that would have seemed natural if you’d been in more relaxed clothing now become impossible in the mind of your potential partner, and so he or she suggests doing something that neither of you will enjoy so much, but that seems in keeping with your more formal clothing and so neither of you have a good time and one date is as far as you get.
If you’ve had to buy new school uniform items this year, you may be dreading the arrival of the spring and the demanded for new PE kit becuase it’s getting to be an expensive business!
Uniform is good for children’s sense of community and for ensuring equality between those who have a lot of disposable income and fashion sense, and those who lack one or the other, or both. But it’s not a cheap option, whether you’re buying in a high street store, via the school’s own shop, or even shopping online. And if you have a child who is already in adult sizes, as many thirteen year olds and up are, these days, you also end up paying VAT on their ‘children’s’ clothing.
There are some ways to save money if you’re canny:
1. Ask the school to consider wholesalers who can produce small orders (say under fifty items) of essential uniform clothing in larger sizes – this might be embroidered polo shirts or logo-printed sweatshirts, which can then be sold to parents whose children are classed as ‘outsize’ by other suppliers.
2. Consider swap shops for outgrown clothing – often a PTA committee can be organised to set up exchanges of informal jackets worn for school events held in public or specialist clothing like cricket togs, which are swiftly outgrown and yet still wearable by a smaller student, perhaps in a lower year.
3. Request that essential items such as white T-shirts worn for PE and sporting activities be non-branded – this means you can buy the cheapest available, or even persuade the school shop to bulk buy them for you. The school logo could be kept for items like kitbags that are not going to be outgrown, and still give a sense of uniform when children are taking part in outdoor events.
Apparently we’re all getting bigger – men’s shoe sizes have increased over the past three decades, so the average size, which used to be nine, is now 11 and the ‘average’ woman is now a size 12-14, whereas twenty years ago she was a 10-12. And it’s not just being fatter – we’re also an average of two inches taller than our parents and three inches taller than our grandparents.
So, how does the bigger person dress to look at their best – is it automatically necessary to wear tent-like clothing and clumsy shoes or can you look slim and stylish?
For men, the situation has improved a lot recently – the rise of sports clothing, or sport casual as it’s called in the USA, means that you can look fantastic without having to shop around too much.
There are a lot of old rules about dressing to look slim that no longer apply – for example, all the ‘larger size’ specialists used to tell men to buy shirts with vertical stripes because it was slimming – but nowadays, any fitted shirt that’s striped implies that you’re hiding your gut, so it’s better to buy an end-on-end weave or plain shirt with a good pleat in the back and let the tails hang out to conceal any tummy you might wish to conceal. Alternatively, buy a loose fit polo-shirt that fits perfectly on the shoulders and wear it with a pair of dark coloured tailored trousers. This fools the eye into believing the shirt is tailored too, and that you’re actually slim-fit!
Mens sweatshirts are often recommended to the larger guy, because they tend to be comfortable clothing that comes in XXXL sizing, but if you want to give the illusion of slimness, you’re better to invest in some pastel hoodies with a front zip, and wear them over a dark T-shirt. The V-shape that a half-zipped hoody makes, when worn over a darker undergarment, has a naturally slimming effect, especially when worn with dark trousers and black trainers which lead the eye to see you as narrowing from the shoulders to the feet.
Once again, lots of catwalks featured nautical style clothing – for women in particular this took the form of white trousers. When you’ve got your trousers, and they can be wide-leg, chino or skinny fit, team them with a striped T-shirt, Breton style, in navy and or black and white. For men, this look is turning up as striped long-sleeved tops combined with distressed jeans and boat shoes.
Also, for women, the safari look is still strong – Paul Smith had leopard print clothing worn with brown and black striped accessories and Marc Jacobs went for a more Native American theme, complete with face-paint like Adam Ant. To make this look work, it’s best to pick a colour and then combine prints and stripes in that shade, so tiger stripes work well with black trousers and a lightweight jacket in orange or yellow.
Orange and yellow turned up strongly in menswear: Dolce & Gabbana were offering dayglo orange hoodies and Louis Vuitton took egg yolk yellow and put it in everything from polo-shirts to socks. Summer shorts were much in evidence, and they were much more tailored than in previous years – worn with citrus coloured polo-shirts and crumpled blazers and those deck shoes again.
High fashion that it will be hard work to pull off this summer includes the harem trousers on offer for both men and women – while it’s a bit tempting to think that these loose waist, low crutch garments will hide a multitude of sins, what they actually do is suggest you have something (a big belly, a low-slung bum) to conceal, without actually hiding it. Wear them with care, and make sure they are darker than the top you choose, so that they offer something of a slimming effect.
While Simon Callow might still be tucking in his shirt, and even his T-shirt, there are new ‘rules’ in 2010 for shirt-wearing.
Until this year it’s been stylish for men to wear their shirts with the tails out – not just casual shirts like polos or Hawaiian-style shirts either, but formal shirts have also been hung out in the office.
However, it’s all changing – while women are still wearing tapered shirts with the tails out, men aren’t. Men’s shirts are being worn inside the trousers for the first time in nearly a decade – and classic styled brown or black leather belts were much in evidence on this year’s spring season catwalks. Men’s shirts are not often seen as a barometer of the economy but tails-out shirt-wear is associated with the 60s and 80s, times of economic vibrancy, so it’s not surprising that in this time of economic stringency, shirt-tails are going back in.
On the other hand, women are wearing their shirt tails out, with large costume belts cinching their waists, over extremely short shirts worn with textured tights. This fashion is also associated with leggings and loose trousers like jogging trousers or harem pants and it sends a confusing message, because while short skirts suggest economic buoyancy, loose trousers are more associated with times of economic depression – so men and women’s clothing is carrying different messages about the financial future – let’s hope the women are right!
If you have any kind of team: sales team at work, football team that plays for fun, pub quiz team, you can use promotional clothing like printed T-shirts or embroidered sweatshirts to increase motivation.
The most successful teams all have the same behaviours – they are groups where each member of the team knows their own strengths and how their strengths support the general team to achieve its aims, whether they are to hit a sales target or to score more goals.
Knowing each person’s roles and special skills can be developed by showing their specialist abilities on their team clothing, so a quiz team might all wear the same embroidered sweatshirts with a cartoon mascot on them, but also have nicknames printed on the back, or a sales team might be rewarded by having a special ‘golden’ vest that is worn on dress down Friday by the person who has made the most sales in that week.
Alternatively you can encourage skills development and team thinking by dividing an already existing team in two, like the girls and boys in the popular TV series Glee, and forcing them to compete with each other as well as competing against other teams. Do this by putting one team in one colour clothing, say red polo shirts, and the other team in green. Their incentive could be that the team that scores most goals in practice gets to leave the pitch without helping tidy up, or in business the team that makes most cold calls might be rewarded with doughnuts and coffee the following Monday morning.
Make sure you mix up the mini-teams on a regular basis, so that everybody gets to know the strengths and abilities of all team members – this creates respect and understanding.
The world of work is a tough one this year, but if you start planning now you can make sure that if promotion is on offer, you’re in the right place and condition to get it. Just follow this 3 point guide:
1. Be prepared – understand your company’s goals, even if they seem to have nothing to do with you. When your chance comes, show how what you are doing, or plan to do, meets those goals.
2. Dress the part – it’s not just about fitting in, it’s about dressing up. If you currently dress like everybody else in your department, you may not be looking like a promotable person. If your colleagues wear T-shirts, you should wear smart polo-shirts because a collar gives the impression of greater age and seniority. If the standard for your department is a casual shirts and jeans, stick with the shirt but buy some hardwearing work trousers because it hints that you’re looking for a more serious role. Where your team all come into work in sloppy old clothes, keep your look casual but invest in a new sporty jacket that’s also smart, because it gives the impression you have hidden depths outside of work and that implies you could, and should be doing more.
3. Don’t be lazy – dirty mugs on your desk, crumpled clothing and piles of old paperwork imply you’re not up to your current job, so why should anybody promote you? Clear away your desk debris and iron your work clothing so that it’s crisp every morning. You’d be amazed what a difference it makes to the way people see you.
And when the chance comes, remember to be nice to those who remain below you in the workforce, because they know how to drag you down again!
The dream most people have is that they could keep the wisdom they’ve developed over 50 but get back the energy they had at 20. That’s not possible, but as our sense of our age largely depends on how other people respond to us, we can feel more youthful by looking it!
Dressing to give the impression of youth is easier than you think, as long as you don’t become a slave to fashion. Most of us have found a style that worked for us and stuck with it. Nothing is easier to put a date on than somebody whose clothes reflect the fashion of a decade ago.
Begin by looking at what’s fashionable. This year we’re seeing a lot of fashion clothing that’s based on workwear: for men that means a heavyweight shirt, solid work boots with thick comfortable socks turned down over the boot top. While for women it’s thick tights or leggings teamed with short textured skirts and a white hoodie or sweatshirt.
Decide on just one fashion item that you can wear – if it’s the shirt, don’t go for the boots as well, if it’s the leggings, pick a different kind of top, because most people over forty can only get away with one fashion pick per day in their wardrobe.
Take care with colour – as we age we lose the intensity of colour we have in our skin and that means that strong colours can overwhelm us. If you’re going to wear a red T-shirt, team it with a pair of classic black trousers rather than another bright colour, so you don’t ‘vanish’ into what you’re wearing.
If your hair has begun to grey, you may do better in light pale colours such as a light-blue hoodie or a grey polo-shirt as they don’t wash the colour out of your face. Alternatively you can always remove the grey – but go to a salon and get some expert advice on how to do it, as strange hair colour from dyes that ‘hide the grey’ are as aging as the grey hair itself.
The coldest winter in recent history is all but behind us, and an uncertain spring looms ahead, so how can you dress to be smart, warm and comfortable?
Begin by replacing heavy sweaters and the kind of scarf that you mum knitted for you with something a little more stylish – both give you a rotund appearance that is less than flattering and don’t really allow for layering. Instead, invest in some long-sleeved T-shirts that can be worn with slim-line jackets and the new lightweight scarves that add warmth without bulk – because they are so much lighter, these scarves are still comfortable to wear in spring, especially with a sleeveless fleece. Go for hats, scarves and gloves that tone with each other, rather than a matching set, which is a little old fashioned – a pale blue hat with navy gloves and a blue and grey scarf gives the right impression without over co-ordination.
Vests are great items to layer, and can be worn over or under long sleeved T-shirts or short sleeved ones to add warmth without making you look fat. As the summer approaches, reduce your layers to a polo-shirt under a fleece or if the weather is so cold as to need long sleeves, try a sweatshirt with a knotted scarf around your neck.
Trousers for the year ahead are likely to be straight cut and often worn, by women, tucked into boots well into the spring. If you’re wearing a layered top look, stick to smart black trousers that don’t distract the eye from the complexity of the garments on your upper body.
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