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.

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.

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.

Asda has been conducting research – and it reveals that 68% of shoppers spend money on clothing to cheer themselves up, and that the clothing they choose tends to be brightly coloured. According to Asda, women will reach for red, purple and yellow to boost their confidence on a bad day.

So how does it work?

Medically speaking, colour therapy is not a science but there are several forms of sensory ‘therapy’ that give a person experience of specific colours either in their clothing, or in their environment, or sometimes in the way their home or office is lit: the efficacy of this as a medical treatment is unclear, but the effect of certain colours is long known to have been powerful in influencing others: that’s why monarchs or rulers have always chosen red and purple, which connote majesty and power (and maybe, sexual power too, as red is the traditional colour of sex workers) and spiritual leaders have always chosen pale blue and white, colours seen as being ‘pure’ and full of hope and life.

Yellow is a fascinating colour that falls in and out of favour: many men like to wear yellow in summer as they see it as being sporty – so yellow polo shirts and yellow or yellow checked shorts tend to start selling well around Easter. Women wear yellow in times of optimism, but reject it in times of pessimism, so if yellow is a big colour this year, it’s likely that people will be feeling positive about the economic climate.

If you want to look positive and attract others, the best colour to wear as a man, apparently, is a bright light blue so a turquoise jacket or hoodie would be ideal, while for women, it’s a small amount of red with pink or white, so a white and red ringer T-shirt with pink Capris or a white long-sleeved T-shirt with a long red and white gingham skirt would be perfect. And if you think those colour combinations sound like something out of a Rock Hudson/Debbie Reynolds movie, you’d be right … because those are considered to be amongst the most upbeat films around!

In a cautionary tale, American high school basketball has just had a minor infringement of rules become a major national debating point, all because of the colour of some T-shirts. It’s Make-A-Wish week in the USA and loads of people are taking part in charitable fundraising, just as we do here for Red Nose Day or Children In Need. At Burke High School (Nebraska) the team decided to wear pink – the Make-A-Wish colour – instead of the classic white home uniform and to auction off the uniform tops afterwards to raise funds for the charity. Their competitors, Columbus Discoverers, wore red away tops.

At half-time, one of the Columbus management team raised a formal complaint, saying that the uniform worn by Burke did not comply with league rules and no advance warning of a uniform change had been given. As a result, a technical foul was given against the home team who were one point in the lead at the half time break.

It’s the kind of question that’s arising a lot in sport at present – what’s honourable, what’s acceptable, when are rules enforced and when not? Is it okay not to shake hands with another player? Is it okay to change uniform clothing for a good cause without consulting others involved? What kind of language is acceptable in the heat of the moment during a sporting crisis?

Basically, the basketball officials had no choice but to award the foul once the matter was brought to their attention and the final result, 62-47 to Columbus, made it really insignificant that they’d pointed out the infringement. But it’s worth always bearing in mind, whether you play for a local 5-a-side football team that wears jerseys and one day decides to move to V-necked T-shirts or organise vests for a local running club, that there are often rules about sports clothing that need to be understood and observed and raising money for charity is not considered an adequate reason for breaking them.

As businesses continue to look at opportunities to cut costs and reduce expenditure, the relationship between business casual clothing and business productivity is being reassessed by many companies – and the subtle changes in requirements are catching out many employees who are finding their clothing choices are being highlighted in their annual review. Knowing this, here are the new rules for business casual and personal success:

1. Understand your organisation’s requirements. Some kinds of casual are more casual than others: a brokers office will have a different requirement to an oil company headquarters and a firm that manufactures bicycles will have different standards to one that creates bespoke furniture.

2. Remember that there are different standards within clothing: a pair of jeans that are pale and worn almost to the threads is a completely different prospect to a pair that are navy-blue, crisp and tailored. A white polo shirt with a crisp collar, worn with smart trousers is almost a business shirt, while a creased polo shirt in orange, worn with those faded jeans, is almost barbecue garb.

3. Don’t flash or flaunt flesh: for women in particular, too much skin on show is unhelpful – bare midriffs and deep cut tops or camisoles that reveal the cleavage do little for promotion prospects and may even cause a lack of unity in the workplace as the mixed messages can be detrimental to harmony and productivity.

4. Avoid anything that can cause offence: T-shirts with words or images can easily be misinterpreted, shorts and sandals may reveal areas of the body that other cultures, or even other individuals, would rather were kept covered.

5. While casual is open to interpretation, it’s important to bear in mind that the workplace is where work is done, and while you may be at your most productive in an old hoody and a pair of sweatpants, your clothing choices may disincentivise those around and could affect your chances of receiving the recognition your work deserves.

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.

Hollister has become synonymous with twilight retailing: and teenagers seem to love buying casual clothing in such dark conditions that they don’t actually know what colour their new garments are until they’ve got them out of the store. According to the Daily Mail, parents are complaining about not being able to see the true colour or the price of what they’re buying, and even of losing track of their teenagers in the store.

The ‘greeters’ whose six packs are on display even if there is snow on the ground are also viewed with suspicion by some parents who feel they are tacky or maybe even that the young men are being exploited.

Even so, the Hollister experience seems to be a popular one, so what can parents learn from it about teenagers and shopping?

1. Casual clothing needs special focus – because teenagers spend most of their time in jeans, joggers, hoodies and trainers, these, not party outfits, are the focus of their attention, and the party atmosphere of Hollister can make them feel they are getting more for their money. To get your teen to shop in less expensive outlets, or even online, arrange for one of their friends to come round, let them play loud music and lay on pizza, snacks and multi-player gaming in between bouts of online clothing browsing. This makes them much more likely to engage with the idea
2. Colours matter – Hollister are coy about the number of returns they receive but it does seem to be the one part of the shopping process that disconcerts teens. Point out that online shopping allows teens to look at all the colours, sizes and options, to do comparison shopping and even to google potential purchases and see reviews on their wearability. This encourages a picky shopper to realise that they can spend as long as they like debating a black T-shirt versus a red one, online but in the shop it gets annoying to family and friends!
3. Feed the senses – Hollister spray perfume around their shop and on their customers to make the experience memorable. Do the same for your teen shoppers by squirting the room with their body spray before they start shopping – believe it or not, psychologists say that a favourite scent can  prejudice us in favour of an experience by up to 46%.

If you think you’re one of those who looks fantastic in sportswear, JD Sports may be looking for you. They are searching out “real people with real style” to replace their usual models for their next promotional campaign. Using Facebook and an app that allows people to log in, enter themselves, or friends in the contest, and vote on the winners, they will choose a top twenty potential models, who will be whittled down to the final eight winners.

To look good in sports clothing, it’s important to wear items that are properly weather-appropriate. Clothing should keep you warm, but not trap sweat, allow you to move freely and – to look really good – be in colours and styles that make the most of your features.

Consider the winter sports look by layering. A bright-coloured polo-shirt looks great worn under a fleece and allows good arm muscles to be revealed without the goose bumps marring the appearance of the would-be model. Pink, orange and bright green are good colours to wear, although if you have an excellent tan and good teeth, a pure white polo-shirt or T-shirt may give an impression of extra health.

For women, wearing long shorts with trainers is a good move, as this is considered to be one of the hot looks for 2012, so showing how well you can work the look may move you into the shortlisted twenty.