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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!
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.
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.
There’s a Bank Holiday coming up which means that British men up and down the country are hoping to hit the beach or park to catch a few rays and maybe – if they’re single – catch the eye of a pretty girl. But a recent survey for menswear retailers reveals that women think British men are the worst dressed men on holiday, so impressing a potential partner with your summer clothing is important to making the right first impression.
What to avoid: heavy metal band T-shirts, anything so faded that the design can no longer be made out, baggy shorts and un-ironed track trousers. These, along with baseball caps worn backwards, are the worst beach fashion crimes men can commit according to the single women surveyed.
What to wear: pressed shorts – cargo shorts and neat chino shorts, with sandals or trainers but no socks – that’s what impresses women, apparently. You’re your smart shorts with a crisp white T-shirt or, if you’re the kind of man who isn’t confident about keeping a white tee clean all day, with a grey or navy blue one. Black T-shirts were described as ‘player clothing’ by many women or ‘dandruff monitors’ but others, and you don’t want either label!
For barbecues and evening drinks, shorts are out – men should wear smart casual trousers or dark jeans, and either a neat polo-shirt or a sweatshirt or hoodie. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt is a way of remaining single as the female sex say that men in bright baggy shirts are not romantic.
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.
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 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 adoption of dress-down Friday has become commonplace across the world and more businesses, everywhere, are also moving to a position of allowing their staff to dress casually every day.
Casual clothing, like polo-shirts, has become business standard for several reasons:
1. Polo shirts are easy for everybody to wear, while clothing that is more constricting, such as shirts with stiff collars, cuff buttons and so on can present particular problems for people who have mobility problems or disabilities, or who are outside the standard size range.
2. Polo shirts are also easy to launder, so there’s no excuse for people not to look good. They don’t require ironing although they look ultra-smart when pressed and they work well with casual or smart trousers or jeans, and with skirts.
3. Polo shirts and other items of casual clothing are more comfortable, so staff feel better and are more productive, especially when the working day is long and they are under stress.
4. Polo-shirts and T-shirts can easily be printed or embroidered with company logos and messages to increase public awareness of the company.
So if your employer hasn’t moved to dress-down Friday or to a more casual clothing style, why not mention all the ways they’ll benefit if they do?
With the World Cup coming up, many a fan is about to invest in a commemorative team shirt and will want to both wear it and keep it perfect. The collectors who invest in such clothing never even open the packet, so they can sell their shirt in ‘mint’ condition but the true fan wants his polo-shirt or team T-shirt to be on his back as he watches the match – and he also wants it to be in a condition that means he can pass it on to his son or daughter as a treasured memento.
Perhaps you have a favourite T-shirt or polo-shirt you want to keep looking good. Maybe it’s the polo-shirt you were wearing when you met the love of your life, or the lucky polo-shirt that got you through your college exams – either way, you can use a few simple rules to keep your casual clothing looking great.
Wash favourite garments inside out, and if you’re using a washing machine use a cool setting rather than hot which can damage printed T-shirts over a long time period.
One of the problems that sometimes happens with a polo-shirt is that the collar starts curling, to avoid this there are several things you can do:
• Wash your polo shirts inside out and on a cool setting as above. If you use a tumble dryer, take them out while they are still slightly damp and smooth them into shape before finishing the drying on a hanger on the washing line.
• When they are dry, fold polo shirts and T-shirts like shops do and put them in a drawer, because hanging them can stretch the shoulders which both makes them baggy and can cause collars on polo shirts to warp.
• If your collar has already begun to curl, iron it dry using a damp cotton cloth over the shirt and a short spray of starch to get it back into shape. From now on when you wash it, fasten all the collar buttons on the polo-shirt before washing to help the collar hold its shape.
Follow these rules and your T-shirts and polo shirts will stay looking great for years.
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