Starting today and running until 30th October 2011, the British Ski and Board show is taking place at the Birmingham NEC. It includes an amazing amount of interactivity, including an indoor skill slope with expert instructors and a climbing challenge on two specially constructed climbwalls with fake ice. There will be a winter film festival, several trick shows and a fashion show too.

If you’re looking for bargains in ski-wear, you can balance fashion with frugality by investing in base clothing that supports winter-sport outerwear without breaking the bank:

1)    Thermal underwear is vital because it transfers moisture out to the next layer of your clothing and keeps your body warm and dry.
2)    Ski socks – like other work socks, have two functions: to keep the feet warm and dry and to protect feet against hard impacts such as knocks and bouncing. The thicker and more padded the better as far as socks are concerned, as long as the socks fit comfortably inside your ski boots.
3)    Fleeces, whether jackets or jumpers, are the second layer of protection after thermal underwear – they need to be lightweight but a tailored fit so that they are snug against the underlayer and don’t bulk up between the thermals and a specialist ski jacket or salopettes.
4)    Ski boots need to be specially designed to work with bindings or boards – getting them specialist fitted at a ski show is a good way to make sure you have boots that work well for you and keep you safe.

Or almost any other male celebrity who takes your fancy – assuming they are under thirty and dress in clothing that can be replicated through the major online retailers and high street fashion shops.

How? By visiting myCelebrityFashion.co.uk which has launched a men’s section this month, so that the Waynes of this world can keep up with their Coleens and the Davids with their Victorias.

The website reckons to reveal the latest male celebrity trends and where to buy them so ordinary folk can ‘steal the style’ of their favourite celebrities by using a tagging system that shows buyers where to similar, or even identical garments and accessories to those of the starts.

It’s linked to over 400 fashion retailers and generates sales by directing visitors to any items that take their fancy as stocked by those retailers. So it’s not necessarily the most cost effective way to look like a star!

So if you want to find a Steven Jones brown shirt, geek glasses like Matt Cardle, David Beckham’s black beanie and Channing Tatum cargo shorts, go visit the website – but remember to shop around to find clothing bargains that are just as good as those on the mycelebrity site, but may be a lot cheaper.

The winner will be decided by whoever’s response is ‘liked’ the most by other facebook users. So get thinking about why Autumn is a great season and share it on facebook for the chance of getting this fantastic jacket!

Polo-shirts.co.uk has a new competition where we’re giving our facebook fans the chance to get the clothes they want at a discounted price: its called Love it, Link it, Like it! To enter you just have to follow these simple steps:

1) If you see a product you really want on polo-shirts.co.uk, post the link to that product on our facebook wall.
2) Tell us what you like about the product and why people should vote for it.
3) Get people to ‘like’ it – the product with the most ‘likes’ will be discounted!

The competition runs for two weeks and then fans of polo-shirts.co.uk on facebook will get a 10% discount on that product for seven days following the competition. So if you love something, post your link, get your friends to like it and be in with a chance of getting your favourite product, cheaper!!!

To give you an idea of how the post could look, there’s an example below. Good luck!

 

Software developers Worldweaver Ltd have a competition for the best game demo made using the DX Studio platform. It’s an ideal contest for the well-dressed geek, or perhaps the geek who would like to be well dressed! You have to unleash your inner gamer and come up with a complete demo by 20th December and the prizes are impressive: the winner gets £1,000 cash, a Commercial Pro DX Studio license (whatever that means) and a limited edition DX Studio Polo Shirt and USB key. Runners up will receive a Non-commercial Pro DX Studio license, Polo-Shirt and USB key. Winners will be announced on 22nd December. More details at www.dxstudio.com

And a Hawaiian shirt company has broken its own world record. Hilo Hattie made the world’s largest Aloha shirt in 1999 and this year they have repeated the challenge, making a sixteen foot tall shirt to celebrate the University of Hawaii – exactly why the university should be celebrated this year isn’t clear, but the shirt big and bright and definitely not the kind of thing you should wear in the workplace if you’re hoping for promotion!

The annual Printwear and Promotion Awards are designed to recognise outstanding garment industry achievements in the following areas:

1. Technical Innovation Award
2. Customer Service Award
3. Environmental/Energy Saving Award
4. Promotional Product of the Year
5. Garment Decorator of the Year
6. Manufacturer of the Year
7. Distributor of the Year

The Quayside Group was established in 1995 and since then the business has become a leading supplier of wholesale clothing. All the business’s operations run on e-commerce-enabled express clothing platforms. The Quayside Group is proud to announce that it is a finalist in two categories in the Printwear & Promotion Awards.

CUSTOMER SERVICE AWARD

(sponsored by: Screen Process & Digital Imaging magazine)

The judges noted that www.polo-shirts.co.uk uses its online Satisfaction Monitoring System (SMS) to understand its customer’s views on the service and the products it supplies. Customers are sent a post delivery online questionnaire to complete and upon its return, SMS gives www.polo-shirts.co.uk a unique understanding of its customers’ feelings. It provides the company with vital information and helps ensure Quayside is constantly offering an unbeatable product range and service.

DISTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR

The Judges noted that Quayside Clothing has used the power of the internet to offer total convenience, easy ordering and outstanding customer service through its web platforms, which distribute products from JHK, Fruit of the Loom, Stedman, Fanshirt, SAF Organic Clothing, and print materials from Grafityp. Its web ordering systems www.tradetag.co.uk and www.polo-shirts.co.uk both use sophisticated search technology to ensure customers are able to find and order the products they need – fast.

The Awards will be announced on Monday 3rd March at the NEC Birmingham.

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

 As the minnows swim into the same pool as the whales, (sorry Scotland, better luck next time!) and coaches and managers are sacked, left right and centre, it’s a good time to look at the background to the game’s most famous product (apart from Johnny Wilkinson’s kicking skills, of course) the shirt. 

A rugby shirt is also known as a jersey, and the term describes shirts worn by both rugby union  and rugby league players. In sports terms it may have long or short sleeves, although the garment trade views long sleeves as standard. Traditionally, rugby shirts had a buttoned opening, called a placket, which is similar to that used in polo shirts but with a stiffer collar. However, modern rugby shirts often have a very small collar so as to provide less material for a potential tackler to get hold of – of course that would be illegal, and never happens, but isn’t it interesting that garment design has been altered to prevent it happening anyway? 

Standard shirt designs consist of five or six horizontal stripes or “hoops” in alternating colours. Football shirts traditionally have vertical stripes instead, apart from Q.P.R. who have always had a competition shirt with hoops – nobody seems to know why! As rugby is played mainly in winter, a cotton rugby kit can weigh around 6 lb when wet. This extra weight has to be carried by the player, in addition to running in wet, heavy ground, and this is why most competition shirts have an element of polyester in the fabric mix, because it doesn’t soak up water like cotton does. 

Rugby World Cup winners 2003 photograph by Bombdog, used under a creative commons attribution licence

The winner of our March win an ipod competition was Sam Collard of the Mug Barn in Little Harrowden. Thank you for your business and we hope you enjoy the ipod !

During the Printwear an Promotion we ran a scratch card competition to win an Apple Nano Ipod. The lucky winners were were Amy And Sue Dodsworth from Dallas Embroidery in Inverness, Scotland.