Jubilee fever is here, in case you hadn’t noticed. It’s a particularly British kind of fever though, and the symptoms include grumbling, head-shaking and negative comments. If you’re not a Brit, it would be easy to believe we’re not looking forward to the Jubilee and the Olympics, but that’s just the way we show our enthusiasm along with queuing and complaining about the weather. We love it really.

And red, white and blue are everywhere. Union Jack biscuits, dip-dye haircuts and waistcoats abound, so how does the average stylish individual cope with this sudden desire to dress like a deckchair on acid?

The answer is coordination. For men, this year’s big deal on casual clothing will be white. Spearheaded by the David Beckham underwear phenomenon, layered white clothing will be big for guys: aim for a white vest, under a white shirt or a white polo-shirt with white jeans and a navy jacket. Don’t attempt this look with very short hair though, as it can easily start to look like you’re an escaped mental patient, especially if you’re slim built. The hair look that goes with white clothing is longer than in many recent summers, tousled and shiny.

For women this year the trend will be into the navy end of the spectrum, picked out with a lot of bling. For casual wear, try mixing it up with a blue skirt and hoody with platform trainers and a big diamante brooch, or jeans, a striped blue and white shirt, pearls and a sleek updo finished off with a red, white and blue bow or rosette.

More formal wear is looking Olympian with blazers for both men and women being worn over pastel polo shirts. Taffeta skirts are around for women, worn with a camisole and beaded cardigans to allow for the changeable British weather. Umbrellas are de rigueur and of course the only acceptable brolly colour this year is red, white and blue!

Dressing for the street (party) is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog

If you’ve been inspired by the new Stella McCartney uniforms and want to dress in the same streamlined style as Britain’s Olympic hopefuls, here are a few tips to help you get the look and to get the fitness, if not of an Olympian, at least of a contender!

1. Focus on navy – Stella McCartney chose a dense shade of navy to be the background of many of the uniform components, to create an effect of strength and solidity. Navy blue T-shirts and vests are great for showing off well-sculpted arms, and if you’re aren’t brilliantly developed, try some fake tan to help give definition to pecs.

2. Combine tight and loose – soft flowing jog pants look good with camisole tops for women, while men can benefit from skin-tight cycling shorts worn with loose polo-shirts: the contrast in shape and form can help hide major problems such as a pot belly.

3. Red shoes – McCartney put her athletes in red training shoes, and that’s likely to be a keynote of this year’s sporting looks in the UK, so if you can’t get red shoes, try for socks that are solid red or have a red band to them, red gloves for winter running or football training and red hats or baseball caps for summer training.

4. Hoodies are definitely very much part of the focus, and the lighter the fabric weight the better, as layering sports clothing is going to be crucial for our athletes this year, in the UK’s changeable summer climate.

How to dress like a London Olympian is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog

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.

Dressing for rain is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog

Fake clothing, bags, DVDs and cigarettes are to be found all over the world, but particularly in established retail locations where students and tourists congregate, such as California. Current confiscations there suggest that the ‘underground economy’ could be costing the state around $8 billion annually. The people making the garments are poorly paid, and the lack of tax paid on them means jobs are not created and local services are not funded. Lose-lose all round.

The goods are often sold in markets or as part of festivals, and a key feature of the new black economy is the creation of ‘second-hand’ counterfeit clothing from brands such as Hilfiger (jeans) and Lacoste (polo shirts) which are less liable to such close inspection as new clothing. Just because it’s not new, doesn’t make it genuine!

And in the UK, fakers are costing the economy, and individuals, a great deal. A recently sentenced man was found to have more than 6,000 fake designer clothing labels in his possession and to be running a factory scale counterfeit operation that was producing several hundred garments a month.

So why not buy a fake? In terms of casual clothing, it can look like a good deal to buy a knockoff pair of jeans or a counterfeit hoodie but in the long term, casual clothing brands work hard to maintain their quality and the longevity of the garments they offer, so cheap versions of top of the range clothing may last no time at all and may warp or twist, fade or even tear where poor quality fabric is placed under stress to match high quality originals. Even if those things don’t happen, counterfeit garments usually collapse very quickly, becoming saggy and bobbly – giving a clear indication that they are not the real thing. While the bargain looks enticing on the market stall, if it doesn’t hold up to continued wear and laundering, it may be an expensive mistake.

Counterfeit clothing costs everybody more is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog

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.

Tomboy fashion for boys and girls is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog

Joleon Lescott is in discussions with Manchester City over a proposed line in casual clothing aimed at twenty something fans of fashion and sport. Since taking part in Shay Givens Fashion Kicks event last year, Lescott seems to have focused strongly on developing a fashion identity that could be turned into a brand. He’s not alone, David Beckham is perhaps the most famous of the British players to create a clothing line, and a perfume, but Rio Ferdinand has had success too.

So what’s the Lescott look likely to be, and how do you get it without paying designer prices?

One rumour is that the new brand will feature his distinctive scar (from a car accident as a five year old boy) as a trademark, although that seems unlikely, however it may feature as a line art design on vest T-shirts that seem to be one of his favourite garments, and while the clothing will probably feature Man City colours at least in the first couple of years he tends towards grey, black and red as a clothing palette. Sportswear will be a big feature if the line goes ahead, and we can expect to see pale blue, grey and black vests, maybe with that scar as a watermark style print on the front, along with hoodies and track trousers.

If you want the look, aim to buy vests, maybe getting them printed with your name in a gothic tattoo style, or with a scar emblem if you, like Lescott, have such a feature, and focus on combining vests with more formal jackets or hoodies with designer denim and boots, to get the luxe sports look that Lescott is likely to aim for.

Lescott clothing line? How to get the football look … is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog

This year is Olympic year and there’s no doubt that London will be packed with people wearing sporting gear, even if they are not, themselves, sporty. Designers are clearly being influenced by the combination of Cool Britannia and sporting fever, and designers such as Lacoste, Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors are all getting hot under the collar.

Performance fabrics, such as poly-cottons or poly-elastic-cottons are very much in evidence along with sports styling such as ultra-long vests worn over leggings for women and layered T-shirts in primary colours for men.

A lot of dropped crotch cotton trousers turned up on the catwalk again in the spring collections, and it will be interesting to see if they actually make it into the high street this year – last year the harem pant style was very much in evidence in the collections but not very prevalent in the shops.

One difference this year is in colour. While male luxe sportswear is still focused on bright colours, the female palette is much more subtle, with bronze, grey, heather, cream and stone appearing as basic tones. This makes dressing in luxe sports clothing much more accessible to the average women both financially and in terms of body shape. While most of us can’t contemplate pearl coloured leggings and a sheer panelled vest, we can imagine wearing a gold or silver vest or camisole, under a grey zip-up hoody, with dark jeans or leggings. To get the look, focus on a good leather slouch bag, or even better, a leather backpack which looks properly sporty and consider jogging bottoms worn with heels, ‘sporty’ hairstyles like pig-tails tied with wool, gymnast-style, and neon detailing like earrings and shoe-laces.

Sports Luxe – get the look is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog

Starre Varten, author of the Eco-Chick Guide to Life, writing at Mother Nature Network poses the question – is it acceptable now to wear pyjamas all day?

Surely not. And yet the trend for stay at home mums to turn up at the school gate in their nightwear is increasing, and teens have been seen shopping on Sundays in their PJs.

Of course the trend towards casual clothing has accelerated, and women now feel completely comfortable to walk around all day in leggings and yoga pants, where a few years ago such clothing would have been gym attire only. And as Varten points out, casual clothing breaks down class and income distinctions and allows everybody to be treated equally. In the days when rich people dressed one way and poor another, social distinctions were clearly made on sight – now that we all wear jeans and T-shirts, even the President of the USA (on his days off) wears hoodies, we’re told – we all have the opportunity to interact without barriers created by clothing judgements.

On the other hand, there’s no doubt that overly casual attire will still lead to social isolation. The mothers who don’t get out of their sleepwear to collect their children from school may struggle to obtain employment or other opportunities when they seek them if their habit of dressing down has become ingrained because it can suggest to others that these are people who have no interest in achievement and little desire to emulate others.

So where do we draw the line? The answer may be simple – don’t wear your PJs in the street, instead, wear your streetwear to bed! A camisole top and shorts, for women, or short sleeved T-shirt and shorts for men, can be as comfortable as nightwear and if you really can’t be bothered to change your clothes, allows you to leave the house without earning yourself a reputation for idleness.

When is casual clothing too casual? is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog

Clare Balding, BBC presenter, has said in the Radio Times that, ‘Female faces will dominate the British medal haul in 2012’ in reference to the London Olympics. Balding pointed out that women’s ability to take part in codified competitive sport is nearly 900 years behind that of men, but that women are likely to lead the medal tables for Britain.

The impact of sport on wider society is easily seen through sports clothing: the hoody, once the preserve of boxers, the rugby shirt and polo shirt and jogging bottoms or trackies, worn originally by track athletes, have all become part of mainstream casual clothing.

This new freedom to play sport and wear sporting clothing has given many women a new freedom to invest in their bodies as competitive instruments and that has led to a change in their approach to clothing. Many more women now wear what is called Sports Luxe and it is a key feature of the West Coast Cooler Fashion Week in Belfast. Sports Luxe is clothing with a dual purpose: looking good and feeling good in times of activity. Designers such as Marc Jacobs, Hugo Boss and Philip Lim have made this particular style their own by using rich colours and unusual fabrics: plum coloured jogging pants or tuxedo shirts that wick away sweat, for example.

For those who can’t afford designer clothing a stylish women’s polo shirt worn with jeans or jeggings and a pashmina, or casual trousers or leggings teamed with a cashmere top and designer trainers both work as Sports Luxe statements.

Sportswear for women is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog

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.

Care in the air – how to dress for business travel is a post from: Polo Shirts Blog