The UK’s current weather forecast suggests that we are in for a continuing deluge – so how do you dress for spring rain and still look good?

Rain is depressing – you can lift your mood, and create a different vibe through clothing that is much brighter than your usual choices. Steer clear of warm tones though: light clear blues, greens and primrose yellows give a greater effect of light and space than oranges and egg yolk yellows which can become garish looking through the amount of grey in the ambient light.

Boots are essential – you can even wear boots with shorts, these days, as long as you have rugged enough socks (and tuck the socks down, don’t pull them up your legs until they look strained) but anything else looks silly in a rainstorm. For women, slouch boots and a short cotton skirt work well with a bright hoodie for rain days, while for men, long shorts, desert boots and a sweatshirt under a showerproof jacket give a jaunty image.

Hats work too, but baseball caps don’t look as cool in the rain. A knit cap shrugs off the rain and looks great. If you have long hair, wrap it around your head before pulling on the hat and when you take the hat off, hang your head upside down to shake out the kinks.

With jackets, suede and denim are non-starters as they both look rubbish when wet and suede can be permanently damaged. Fleece is okay but good shower-proof jacket fabrics are even better as the look good, breathe in the wet and preserve the integrity of the clothing underneath.

This year’s key summer fashions are sport and fun related – they are girls dressing as guys and grown men dressing in a more childlike fashion. Don’t get it wrong though – the boy look is not for work: this year men are dressing smartly for work and for fun in their time off, and it’s not just a casual look either, the boy look requires a kind of style that has a sharp and amusing edge to it.

For men this means working with colour: dyed denim is big this year so it might be bright red jeans with a white T-shirt and a pair of spotty or chequerboard Converse trainers. For the beach it could mean ‘cartoon’ shorts (ie a pair long and baggy enough to flap around) in bright blue or red, worn with a yellow or green baseball cap and a curl of hair that flips about boy-style. It doesn’t mean clever slogans on T-shirts, looking too cool, or wearing all one colour.

For women the tomboy look is definitely featuring baseball jackets or blousons, often made of silk and worn over many layered vests to give a lightweight but athletic look to casual clothing. Boyfriend jeans are big, as are Capri pants or joggers in bright but not girly colours: think purple, green and yellow, rather than pink or powder blue. The boiler-suit is trying to make a come-back but it may not be this year that it breaks through again. Oversize T-shirts are heading back though, worn over a contrast colour camisole and leggings, with Converse high-tops.

It’s claimed that America’s competitive industries are becoming more stylish as competition for scarce resources hots up. The trend has started in Hollywood, where the stars my have an unlimited budgets to dress themselves but those working in the film industry are needing to look smart or risk being seen as having not enough smarts (or resources) to make deals.

The Hollywood Reporter suggests that deal makers in America are moving away from their casual, Silicon Valley garb of polo shirts and jeans because the tough world at the box office (and especially with John Carter reported to be the biggest flop of Disney history) means that stylish dressing and power appearance are vital to looking serious.

Baseball caps and hoodies are out, and formal shirts are in. While suits are universal, they are definitely making a come-back and casual clothing is being reserved much more for ‘in the office’ days.

For women this dress sense often means dresses – tailored ones with long-sleeved jackets, or smart trousers with tailored shirts. Monogrammed shirts are big in Hollywood right now, and as monogramming adds little to the price of a shirt but can be a make or break in closing a deal, it’s definitely a discreet way of pegging yourself as a winner.

According to a Mintel report into American men’s clothing choices, many men want to be more fashionable than they are – in fact a quarter of them would love to be able to be fashion conscious. A senior retail and apparel analyst at Mintel claims that 85% of men who say they shop just for comfortably clothing would be willing to step out of their ‘clothing comfort zone’ if they knew what looked good on them.

So how can a man get to be fashion conscious and clothing comfortable?

One way is to use the support of social media. Many more men are learning to try on clothing and then send a photo to their friends and family members for an instant vote on whether to buy the garment or not.

Another way is to create outfits online, using new platforms like pinterest, to pull together clothing boards for special events or to plan holiday packing lists, and then get others to have input to the suggested choices. This is proving increasingly useful for men when shopping online, as it allows other people to contribute to their boards by adding items that would work with existing clothing. For example, when planning clothing for a weekend away, a man may have a pair of trousers and a hoodie that he particularly wants to take along. He uploads picture of them to his board and then others add items to build capsule outfits. The hoodie, with a striped T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops for the beach, then the trousers with a casual shirt, boots and unstructured jacket for the Saturday evening and finally the hoodie with a black polo-shirt and the trousers for a trip to the pub on Sunday lunchtime. Other accessories such as caps and scarves, belts and even jewellery can be suggested and accepted or rejected and then, for the chosen items, searched for online to get the best price.

There’s a good article on how Fashion Week fashion ends up on the high street over at MSN and it’s important because for those on a budget who want to, or have to, look good, understanding the process from catwalk to casual clothing helps pick out what counts, and what doesn’t.

If you’re in an industry where fashion matters: fashion itself, media, graphic design, art etc, what you wear can say a lot about you and how you fit in. So recognising key details such as colour and cut can help you pick out trends to invest in that mark you as a trend setter, not a slouch.

Colours, such as this year’s hot tip of mustard are crucial. But you don’t have to invest in a new mustard coloured leather jacket like those seen at Prada’s show – just get a mustard coloured vest or T-shirt and wear it under your existing shirts, zip up hoodies and jackets: instant trend for a few pounds rather than a month’s disposable income.

Watch hairstyles too – if every male model has slicked back hair, you can bet that the look is going to be appearing in soap operas and teen band videos in within weeks, and then in your local barbers before the end of the year.

One of this year’s big features is sportswear with sports hair – that means technical clothing in bright colours and tousled hair that’s also ‘bright’ in other words with strong outdoor colours such as racing blond highlights, diver-style wet look curls and boxing ring razored back layers worn with grey hoodies and sweatshirts.

While we’re shivering in the icy blasts of winter, the fashion industry is ready for spring and this year’s top tips for casual fashion are mint, colour-blocking and parka jackets, so maybe winter is still with us!

Mint

Pale blue-green, icy in shade and crisp in format, mint is the colour for summer. For many of us, it’s a difficult shade to wear. Top tips are to combine mint with navy for a simple smart appearance, so a mint-coloured polo-shirt combined with navy shorts or a skirt would work well. Mint shades also look better with a tan, so if you’re feeling a bit washed out, fake facial tan (or a tinted moisturiser for women) will help you balance its ice-cream coolness with some summery warmth.

Colour Blocking

This is the technique of combining colours that usually clash. It’s not for the faint-hearted and many men, in particular, find it tough to create this look with confidence. If you have doubts about solid blocks of colour, combine a colour, say coral or orange, with a neutral such as stone or grey. A fuschia T-shirt with grey leggings for women, or a yellow polo-shirt with stone coloured chinos, for men, is less risky that the full on effect of colour blocking that requires two clashing colours, such as purple and yellow or green and red, to be set against each other.

Parka Jackets

This look, typical of mods, was seen a lot on catwalks towards the end of last year, but the new parkas are lighter in weight, and brighter in colour. It’s not a look for men who are narrow shouldered, and if you feel you may look weedy in a parka, it may be better to go for a long-line sleeveless fleece, which allows you to bulk out your build underneath (maybe by wearing a mint hoody?)

Many of us have to fly for business, and it can be quite difficult, as a new traveller, to get to grips with how to pack and what to wear, especially if you have to get off the plane, sometimes after a long flight, and get straight into a meeting, conference or negotiation.

Here are a few tips to help the novice business traveller look right and feel right and hit the ground running:

Carry your jacket onto the plane. It’s difficult to keep a formal suit looking good on a long flight, but certain kinds of jacket were made for business travel: tweet is pretty well uncrushable and looks great with a smart white cotton shirt. When you take it off and put it in the overhead locker, make sure you fold it carefully and lay it on top of your case, not beside it, or your jacket will end up crushed at the back of the locker by somebody else’s bag.

Wear a shirt with a top pocket – this can hold your passport and travel tickets but never put pens in shirt pockets because they tend to leak under cabin pressure and that’s the end of a good shirt and the way to make yourself look like a geek in a business meeting!

Put a plain white T-shirt in your carry on luggage. On a long flight you can take of that good white shirt and pull on a plain T-shirt to travel in. That means your shirt, neatly folded into your hand-luggage, stays fresh and you can relax and drop your meal down the front of your T-shirt without worrying that it will be seen by the people meeting you at the other end! And if the worst comes to the worst and you are trapped in an airport, you’ve got a change of clothes with you.

Wear zip up or slip-on boots. This means you can get your boots on and off easily for security without the hassle of laces for trainers. They look good enough for a business meeting too.

A-list actors took to the catwalk for Prada’s menswear show this week. Gary Oldman, was the show closer (and show stealer) but Adrien Brody, Jamie Bell and Willem Defoe also got up and dressed up for the catwalk show.

It opened with an outfit that will define the autumn look – a black coat (think Sherlock Holmes – Cumberbatch, style) worn with a white shirt and under that, a lightweight white polo-neck in silk. Lots of suit jackets, sharp tailoring and masculine detail were evident and key colours were black, white and red.

If you can’t see yourself, or the man in your life, wearing a white silk polo necked sweater under a shirt, consider going for a fitted white polo-shirt with a lightweight white T-shirt underneath. Same look, one notch down in power dressing.

But power really was the theme and high collars – even popped collars on polo-shirts and modern tailoring were very evident. Suit style jackets were often double-breasted and worn with badges or studs to make them less formal.

A recent report by Bain & Co claims that luxury menswear is currently the fastest-growing area of the clothing market with double the growth rate of luxury women’s wear and the trend towards evening dressing is set to continue. Cashmere scarves and monogrammed shirts are keynotes for everyday dressing in the year ahead.

The weather is unpredictable and driving can become unpredictable too … whether we’re a passenger or a driver, it’s vital to be prepared for changeable weather and poor road conditions, particularly because traffic police suggest that during bad weather the majority of collisions would have been preventable with better preparation.

The first thing is to remember that speed limits on road signs are maximum ones, set for ideal road conditions when the surface is dry and the temperatures are warm. Slick surfaces require a longer stopping distance and poor visibility can result in collisions.

Top tips for safe driving include:

1. Checking road and weather conditions before departure and, if necessary, postponing travel.
2. Ensuring the vehicle has enough fuel to reach the destination with some to spare for detours.
3. Taking a mobile phone, blankets, food and water and sensible clothing is essential – remember that you may need layers to keep you warm and then allow you to cool down as temperatures change.
4. A winter jacket in a high vis colour may be a life-saver in poor weather if somebody has to leave the vehicle to put out a warning triangle.
5. If you do have to leave a vehicle, and it’s never recommended, then keeping warm and dry is vital: warm hats, high visibility clothing and gloves and socks with good thermal properties will allow people to keep their body temperature at appropriate levels while out in the weather.
6. Take a clockwork torch so that you can use it if you have to leave the vehicle, and remember to pack a first aid kit in the body of the vehicle so that any small problems can be taken care of without having to pull off the road and open the boot.

We seem to be cycling through a pattern of snow, rain, snow, rain … it can be difficult to know how to dress in this weather, particularly if you’re planning a long winter journey and/or needing to take part in social events when you get there. Other people’s houses often seem too hot or too cold to us.

While it’s appropriate to dress for comfort and safety, it’s also important to ensure that your clothing works for the situations you may find yourself in.

Car journey – make sure old and young have layers of clothing that they can put on and take off. This allows them to keep warm without overheating. Gloves and a hat and scarf really help them to balance their temperature during a long journey. For yourself, wear something comfortable and rugged like jog pants, so that if you have to get out of the car you can get wet or muddy without ruining your clothes. Remember to put your good trousers or skirt somewhere handy so you can change as soon as you arrive.

Trains, planes and coaches – once again, layering is vital. Remember that you may be delayed so you should pack a spare clean T-shirt to put on for sleeping etc. Smart-casual polo-shirts are a better bet than t-shirts for mass travel, because if there are upgrades on offer, there’s a psychological trait in all of us that makes us more likely to upgrade the more smartly dressed individual.

Cycling, walking – a fleece jacket is one of the best investments you can make. It has wonderful insulation qualities, is reasonably waterproof and lightweight.