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Women in particular know that a summer look combines style and comfort, and long sleeved T-shirts can be a real boon, especially when British weather can be so unpredictable.
This year the look is very much long sleeve T-shirt with maxi skirts, as an alternative to the maxi dress, or alternatively, relaxed fit long sleeved T-shirts with Capri pants for a cute but not too casual appearance. If the weather really turns nasty, you can even layer a short sleeved T-shirt or a pretty vest over a long sleeved one, to add warmth without bulk. Plain long sleeve T-shirts look especially good with a bold tribal or bright summery necklace as the round neck can make a simple setting for dramatic jewellery.
They are a particularly good choice to wear for work in summer, because they can look smart without being too frilly. Team long-sleeved T-shirts with lightweight trousers for a good casual office look, and pack a pair of shorts in you bag so that you can change into them and catch a few rays in your lunch break.
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’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.
There’s a vast reproduction of Vincent van Gogh’s famous self-portrait on show outside the Marunouchi Building next to Tokyo Station in Japan. The reproduction is actually a mosaic, ten metres square, made out of more than 2,000 polo shirts. 24 different shades of polo-shirt have been carefully placed to mimic the delicate graduated tones that feature in the original painting. The artwork is designed to encourage people to think about using subtle colours (like those of paintings) in clothing, and has been created by clothing designer Onward Kashiyama Co.
So subtle colours and gentle matching of shades are likely to feature on the catwalks of the next few years, as fashion falls in love with muted shades again. To make this look work for you, invest in one subtle colour choice, such as the chino shade shown in the picture, and match it with a range of off-whites, creams, beiges, fawns and chocolate shades.
Once you get comfortable with the process of colour graduation, you can start using complementary colours – a soft blue T-shirt under a chino coloured polo-shirt, or a pale green vest with grey shorts, to expand the palette of your personal clothing. You can even use the graduated colour approach to integrate your current clothing with the new look – if you have a pair of black trousers, match them with a smart grey shirt, perhaps with a slate or cream T-shirt underneath, a white scarf and a charcoal casual jacket.
You might not even know what a mirdle is, but Marks & Spencer has just launched a super-strength one. It’s a girdle. For men. It doesn’t look like a girdle, it looks like a T-shirt but it’s designed to pull you in, straighten you out and make you look ‘sleek and streamlined’.
So whether you call it ‘shapewear’ or ‘control clothing’ or go with the new word, ‘mirdle’, you may be thinking it’s a magic answer. But it’s not. While the top strength version, which looks something like a classic vest, claims it will slim 1.5 inches off the biggest abdomen, there’s still a couple of issues. What do you look like when you take it off, and how easy is it to spot a mirdle?
Well, everything does tend to hang out when the mirdle is removed and you can have some pretty unattractive compression marks too. As for recognising a mirdle when you see it, women are brilliant at this and as the range of designs is limited, most savvy ladies will spot a mirdle a mile away. Do you really want to be advertising the fact that you’re a bit paunchy?
It’s a better idea to dress cleverly to slim your figure without compressing it. In summer a black vest under a blue or grey short-sleeved shirt gives the impression of a V-shaped torso, For winter, wearing a well fitting pair of trousers with a generously-cut sweatshirt and a scarf that dangles down, cutting the width of your body in two looks substantial rather than chunky
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.
This is the time of year that many of us look forward to a couple of weeks in the sun – if the airlines, baggage handlers and trains aren’t on strike!
Assuming we manage to get to our destination, what should we have packed to make sure we don’t have a clothing meltdown during the Easter holiday?
You’re almost certainly heading for a region famous for sunshine, great beaches and warm nights, so you need to be prepared but pack as lightly as you can, as every gram will count towards excess baggage if you’re flying.
Ensure that you put your daily toiletries and at least one change of clothes, plus swimwear, plus evening wear in your carry-on or overnight bag. This means that if your luggage is delayed (or even worse, lost) you can spend the first day and night of your holiday enjoying yourself while working with the carrier or holiday representative to sort out compensation or delivery of your togs. The items you should carry are: a spare T-shirt and comfortable shorts or jog pants which can double as sleepwear if necessary, a swimming costume for women or trunks for men, a smart polo-shirt for men and a simple lightweight dress for women. This means you can go to the pool and dine out without having to wear your creased and tired day clothes. It also means you have a chance to launder some of your clothes while you wait for the rest to arrive.
A lightweight jacket will protect you from unseasonable spring rains, and that, along with several pairs of shorts or casual trousers, half-a-dozen T-shirt, a formal shirt in case you’re invited somewhere really posh, and underwear, will serve most men. Women will need to consider adding a couple of pairs of lightweight trousers to wear when sightseeing in the day so as to avoid causing offence in some cultures, as well as looking good with pretty camisole tops under jackets at night. Similarly short crush-proof dresses are great for the pool and can double up with T-shirts in the evening when it gets cooler. One formal dress is necessary for visits to casinos or posh restaurants and you might want a good telescopic umbrella, just in case of heavy rain.
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 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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