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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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%.

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.

A recent show at Imperial College, London offered vanishing dresses (using a blend of polymers that dissolve when exposed to H2O), hoodies that actually clean the air as you walk through it, thus leaving the street cleaner than when you found it, and special underwear that makes you fitter.

Within five years we may see full-body compression underwear that allows even ordinary gym goers to run faster, lift more and punch more strongly. Also on the cards is a sports bra that shapes itself to the wearer, and most interestingly to many women, ‘clever’ undies that use the body’s own heat to generate tiny electrical pulses that activate the muscles so that you become slimmer the more you wear the garment. This technology could also be used in socks to help frequent flyers and those who stand all day, by returning blood to the upper parts of the body, thus reducing the risk of clots, thrombosis and varicose veins.

Photo-catalytic clothing is already being tested. It involves cotton clothing treated with a chemical layer that reacts with light to break up water in the air and create radical molecules that neutralise pollution – fitted into the jogging bottoms of running groups or the jackets of street workers this layer could actually make our cities cleaner and safer at no cost to us.

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.

According to Richard Sutcliffe, writing in the Yorkshire Post last week, chat in Sofia city’s bars after the England match covered three topics, the match, the price of beer (dirt cheap!) and ‘the mess the new away shirt looked’ with complaints suggesting the watching fans thought it was ‘more like a polo shirt rather than a team shirt’.

Really?

This came as something of a surprise to me, given that the last time I stood on the terraces (admittedly, back in the days when Alan Shearer had hair) men did not discuss fashion. Even sports fashion.

So I went looking for some evidence of this new discussion subject, and found it almost straight away: Nick Carbone writing in Time magazine points out that the language used to discuss men’s fashion is not very masculine. The idea of a ‘murse’ as seen on the catwalk this year (man+purse = murse) is apparently cringe-making to the average chap.

He also points out that market research group NPD claim that men’s clothing spending rose 4.6% in the first half of 2011, while women’s spending dropped 0.8%.

So it’s a subject of discussion (vocabulary allowing) and a big share of the market, but what are men really focused on?

Clothing that makes them look fit is the key requirement, apparently. Which is why the new football strip was such a disappointment. Each time there’s a new strip, it give the average man a change to wear some new styles without admitting to fashion interest. V-necks for example sell in much greater quantities whenever England are in the World Cup, as it legitimises ordinary men to wear a long-sleeved, v-necked top without feeling embarrassed. Similarly, long socks, snoods, gloves and short shorts all get purchased and worn much more readily when Beckham, Rooney, Ferdinand etc have demonstrated their usefulness on the pitch.