Posts filed under 'safety clothing'
Miguel Caballero comes from a country where clothing can save your life, and he trains new employees by shooting them! Colombian-born Caballero tests his garments by firing at his staff as they model the clothing – the ultimate test of both the wearer and the clothing.
In 1992 he was studying at university during his country’s vicious civil war, and many of his fellow students in Bogota were the children of politicians and business leaders – and wore bullet-proof vests around the campus.
His clothing combines style with utility and is worn Steven Seagal, King Abdullah of Jordan and Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez. Caballero clothing is lighter than military style vests: a bullet-proof leather jacket weighs only 1.2 kilos. Perhaps somebody should have told Harriet Harman and then we’d never have seen her wandering around Peckham in that cumbersome stab-proof vest, because his collection includes shirts, formal blazers, raincoats, and even bullet-proof ties.
But there is one drawback - a polo-shirt that will absorb the bullets from a mini-machine gun is rather expensive … starting at £5,000 and washing instructions are extremely complex!
Mauricio Chazaro, director of Miguel Caballero Ltd, arranges the bulletproof leather jacket for display
August 11th, 2008
The hutongs (alleys to you and me) of Beijing have a new police force – of sorts. They are called ‘Public Security Volunteers’ and there are more than 400,000 of them – arranged into neighbourhood groups that are serving the Olympic security forces which include a mixture of police, over 100,000 ‘counter-terror troops’ and more than 300,000 CCTV cameras. The PSVs patrol litter-dropping, inappropriate clothing and spitting in the street – but by the locals, not the expected foreign visitors! Despite the attempt to distinguish the new PSVs from the old ‘neighbourhood committee’ by giving the new volunteers a snazzy red and white striped polo-shirt to wear when ‘on duty’, there’s a lot of concern in the populace – the former committees were a mixture of spies and party members who reported on the irregular activities of their neighbours, and caused many a midnight arrest or disappearance for ‘re-education’.
The PSV polo-shirts are a big sign of changing China – they are sponsored by the Yanjing beer company, which would have been unthinkable a decade ago, and while every volunteer has been given one, less than half actually wear them. The other half have been put on the black market, still in their original wrappings, as part of the
Beijing Olympic memorabilia business. That too, would have been impossible (or an arrestable offence!) a few years ago.
The concern that the new volunteers have caused can be directly related to their entrepreneurial flair. Those who have flogged their
polo-shirts still need to distinguish themselves from ordinary citizens … so they’ve dug out Cultural Revolution-era red armbands to wear, and those armbands remind nervous Beijingers of the knock on the door in the middle of the night …
Beijing street cleaners in new uniforms
July 29th, 2008
Well, sometimes they become ‘vintage’ or ‘collectable’ (1970s McDonalds workwear is selling for a goodly price on eBay) and sometimes it just gets dumped in rubbish bins or charity shops, but Festival Place shopping centre in Basingstoke has something else in mind. Their old uniforms are to be recycled. More than 600 items, including:
- 350 shirts
- 140 pairs of trousers
- 50 jumpers and cardigans
- 20 Hi-Viz coats
- 30 Hi-Viz waistcoats
- 30 ties
- 60 fleeces
- 20 blazers
- and four suits, have been collected.
They will all be sent to Devizes Textile which will sort through the items, sending the best quality clothing to Africa to be reworn, and recycling the rest into items for industrial use. Danny Williamson, company partner at Devizes Textiles, was equally happy to help. He said, ‘This is the first shopping centre that we have worked with and we look forward to working with them in the future to help reduce Basingstoke’s landfill.’
Workwear, and work colleague, photograph courtesy of Robstephaustralia
April 23rd, 2008
Charlie Porter is associate editor of GQ, the magazine for naughty but intelligent men. Writing in The Guardian, he says ‘Men are supposed to want things simple. Yet with clothing we put ourselves through the most complicated rituals. While women can zip themselves into a frock in seconds, men waste precious minutes clumsily knotting ties, or fiddling with the folly that is the cufflink. Most men can complete these dreary ceremonies with their eyes shut; indeed, it often looks as if they have. But the autumn/winter 08 menswear shows are offering a thrilling new solution to the male work-wear conundrum: the jumpsuit.’
According to Charlie, he fell in love with a jumpsuit designed by Miuccia Prada at this year’s catwalk menswear extravaganza and wears his stark blue Prada with pride, but it’s not the first time he’s succumbed to the desire to look like Elvis. He also has what he calls ‘a roomy, workwear one by Dickies’ that he wears ‘… on days when I want to feel amused by my clothes and don’t care what anyone else thinks’.
Hmmm, he’s a brave man, but I wish he’d call a jumpsuit by its proper British name – the boilersuit. If you think the ‘workwear as smartwear’ revolution is for you, then jumpsuits (or boilersuits) are on sale from Prada, Calvin Klein and Mulberry this autumn. Or just pull on the one hanging behind the shed door and tell people that it’s GQ’s latest tip.
On a totally different note, Totally Workwear in Southport, Australia have a defiant new item on sale – steel toe-capped flip-flops. They call them thongs over there, which leads to much hilarity on the beaches when you’re invited to ‘kick off your thongs’ – but the rugged Australian workman apparently wants to wear his flip-flops to work, hence the tongue in cheek (or strap between toe?) design.
Jumpsuits courtesy of badlogik
February 14th, 2008
Areas of the UK have recently experienced the worst effects of winter and it seems there may be more to come. Employers who have staff working outdoors, and the emergency services in particular, work with Health and Safety organisations to ensure their employees are safe – so what do they do to protect themselves and what can the rest of us learn from this? First, anybody working outside especially in trades like construction, commercial fishing, delivery work and agriculture is vulnerable. Exposure to freezing and cold temperatures for extended periods of time can in rare circumstances lead to real health problems such as hypothermia and cold water submersion can easily result in death. Danger signs include uncontrolled shivering, slurred speech, clumsy movements, fatigue and confused behaviour. If these signs are observed, call immediately for emergency help.
To prevent things getting to this stage:
- Consider whether environmental and workplace conditions may be dangerous and change work schedules to ensure work is done in the warmest part of the day (midday onwards until dusk)
- Encourage employees to wear proper clothing for cold, wet and windy conditions, including layers that can be adjusted to changing conditions, and high visibility clothing so that they can be spotted if they suffer injury.
- Ensure that employees in extremely cold conditions take frequent, short breaks in warm dry shelters to allow their bodies to warm up.
- Use the buddy system, making sure staff work in pairs so that one employee can ensure the other is safe
- Provide warm, sweet beverages (sugar water, sports-type drinks) and avoid drinks with caffeine (coffee, tea, sodas or hot chocolate) or alcohol. Make sure there are warm, high-calorie foods such as hot pasta dishes on offer for lunch breaks etc.
Glasgow snow by moron noodle
January 10th, 2008
Universities from across Europe have been invited to take part in Lindström’s annual international design competition. This annual event, which is aimed at fabric design students and their tutors, has a high profile in the corporate and work-wear worlds.
The Lindström Award is a tutored invitational competition which means that each invited university has to appoint a tutor for the student team that will undertake the task and a maximum of two teams per university can participate. A partner in this process is Klopman International – a leading supplier of work-wear fabrics across
Europe, who will provide the fabrics to be used and make up the students’ prototype garments and the whole process culminates in the Lindström Award Gala and a fashion show.
The life cycle of work-wear is significantly longer than that of street fashion and has different requirements including safety and durability – but even so, the style colour and cut of work-wear needs to be revised on a regular basis so that it benefits from updated understandings of form, function and fabric. Wearing a stylish uniform has a positive effect on job satisfaction and work safety as well has helping establish a brand identity.
Pilots uniform by global jet
December 17th, 2007
Have you booked your work Christmas party yet? If so, this might be something you’d rather not know – more than a third of kitchen workers do not wash their hands after using the lavatory - and more than half never wash their hands before touching food, according to a survey by the Food Standards Agency. The poll of 1,000 staff in restaurants, hotels, take-aways and pubs showed under two thirds had a certificate in basic food hygiene and a terrifying less than 3% of managers understood the importance of training staff in food hygiene issues.
Quite scary stuff, but the domestic market isn’t necessarily any better. Remember Fanny Cradock (if you do, you’re showing your age!) who never wore an apron? Well if it’s good enough for Delia and Nigella, it should be good enough for us. Jamie still turns up in his chef’s whites, and who could forget that however filthy Gordon Ramsay might be in the mouth department, he wears chef’s white AND an apron!
We tend to think of protective clothing as protecting us, (as in keeping us safe, like steel toe-capped boots etc) but it can also be to protect others – whether we work at Langan’s Brasserie or just make cold turkey sandwiches at home, wearing an apron means we keep hygiene to the forefront of our minds – we wash aprons more often than ordinary clothes, we notice if they become stained or greasy and we tend to wash our hands more if we’re wearing one: this means we don’t spread germs around and we seal any germs or dirt on our day clothes under our aprons so they can’t affect the food we cook. So go on, give Mum (or Dad if he’s the cook in your house) an apron for Christmas – you know it makes sense!
aprons by craftybunny
