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

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: 

1. 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)
2. 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.
3. Ensure that employees in extremely cold conditions take frequent, short breaks in warm dry shelters to allow their bodies to warm up.
4. Use the buddy system, making sure staff work in pairs so that one employee can ensure the other is safe
5. 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 

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

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

More than 20,000 winter sports enthusiasts recently attended a British ski and snow-boarding show in Birmingham – and nearly one and a half million Britons are taking part in some kind of winter sports every year.  That number continues to rise year on year, even though we have less snow than ever before!

Despite its dangerous image and the somewhat Teutonic ‘tall white male’ image the slopes still have for many of us, skiing is now a sport available to almost anyone interested in outdoor winter activities.  But it’s important to bear safety in mind  and to wear adequate clothing. In particular it’s true that many women are having trouble getting ski clothing for their sizes, and there’s a big surge in sales on the  protective side of clothing, as skiers are increasingly aware of being safety conscious on the slopes because they don’t want to have their holiday cut short by injuries. Remember that high visibility can be important in bad weather.

For any kind of outdoor sport you need to dress in layers with clothes designed specifically for winter sports and outdoor work which keep you dry and warm at the same time.  They also carry sweat away from your inner layer of clothing which is important to stop chafing and to ensure your body temperature doesn’t drop when you cease to exercise. You definitely must invest in good gloves or mitts, a warm hat and a scarf.  Beware of hypothermia – if you’re feeling cold head indoors and warm up.

Before you hit a snow slope you need to be familiar with your equipment, to be able to walk up the hill sideways and you need to be able to stop – which is the whole point of training on an artificial slope before hitting the snow for real.

ski line photograph by kalevkevad, used under a creative commons attribution licence

Auto Express recently published the results of an experiment they carried out to test the effectiveness of high visibility vests – a bit of a misnomer that, as we’d called them waistcoats or jackets, ‘vest’ being the American term, but anyway …. 

They tested four roads, one lit by street lamps, the other three not. A person stood on the roadside as the testers drover past. For the first test he wore his street clothes; for the second a high visibility vest. A stopwatch recorded the gap between the driver spotting the ped­estrian and the vehicle reaching him – in other words, the driver’s reaction time. The pedestrian was relocated for each test so the driver couldn’t anticipate his position.  The results were shocking.  

Route one was a narrow, heavily wooded rural road with light but fast-moving traffic and no pavement or street lamps.  At 40mph, blinded by oncoming headlamps, the driver spotted the pedestrian only three seconds before reaching him. In reflective gear, the reaction time was more than tripled to eleven seconds meaning the reaction distance  was nearly quadrupled! 

The next story is even worse  – on a fast, unlit dual carriageway at 65mph, the pedestrian wasn’t spotted until two seconds before being passed – barely time to operate the stopwatch! The driver would never have avoided him had he stepped into the road but with the high visibility top, the time was seven seconds and the reaction distance was again virtually quadrupled.  Interestingly, in the third ‘unlit’ test – the only one carried out with headlamps on full beam – the differentials were smaller but the overall reaction times better. On a open A-road there was more opportunity to spot the pedestrian. At 40mph the figure was six seconds. With the high visibility clothing, sixteen seconds – over twice the time and about two-and-a-half times the viewing distance.   The final trial was on a busy, lit suburban A-road at 35mph. As you would expect, the pedestrian was spotted much sooner, without and with a vest. The reaction time was 25 seconds when the pedestrian had the vest on, so the driver even had time to pull over to help without endangering pedestrian, himself or other traffic. 

Perhaps it’s time for Britain to follow the lead of Spain, Italy and Portugal, and make it compulsory for drivers to carry high visibility vests and wear them in a breakdown?

Safety vests must be worn photograph by Exfordy, used under a creative commons attribution licence

The International Oeko-Tex Association, governing body of the Oeko-Tex Standard 100, is set to implement even more rigorous measures before declaring a product safe. As explained recently on this blog the Oeko-Tex mark is widely regarded as the most trustworthy indicator of whether a product contains any potentially harmful chemicals. In their continuous strive to ensure that products they endorse are as safe as possible Oeko-Tex’s new standard will include the prohibition of the dye Disperse Orange 149 and the testing of un-dyed polyurethane materials for carcinogenic arylamines.

All of this means that all products tested by Oeko-Tex are now even safer than before, as the organisation continues to set the standard in testing for materials.