According to one author, there are three levels of business clothing:
1.    Traditional
2.    General
3.    Casual
And if you’ve never been sure what made business clothing and just ‘work clothing’ different, it’s all about the game, apparently.

Knowing which of these is appropriate for the business you work in is empowering to you and in the USA, at least, you can be coached to find the right way to dress. If you think your business clothing could do with a boost, there’s no need to hire a coach. Use our simple guide to work it out.

Traditional – business suits, of course, with collared shirts and ties. Women get to wear both trouser suits and skirt suits, leather shoes (no open toes for either gender) worn with socks or tights – no bare legs even in summer! Basically it’s the kind of clothing that should be worn to a business awards dinner – what we in the UK would call posh, and the Australians call a ‘frocked up’ event.

General – still requires a tie and formal shirt from men, but can mean wearing a tailored jacket and trousers rather than a full suit. Women can now add businesslike dresses (nothing floral or floaty) and smart trousers if they are worn with a tailored jacket.

Casual – finally men can ditch the tie, but they need to stick to wearing suit type outer garments with sports shirts, knit shirts like polo shirts with formal trousers, and smart jumpers over a collared shirt. For dress down days, chinos can be worn. Women can now wear trousers with formal shirts, skirts with blouses without a shirt, two-piece knitwear with tailored skirts or smart round-necked T-shirts with a formal skirt and tailored jacket. Peep toe and sling back shoes are still unacceptable, even in dress down days.

A new study in the peer-reviewed Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE suggests that our perception of clothing may actually influence our judgements about race.

The study required participants to classify each image that appeared on a screen as being either a black or white person, but the images were randomly computer assigned clothing that was either considered to have low social status (a caretaker’s uniform or jog pants) or  something high status such as a business suit or formal shirt.

Interestingly, most participants were heavily influenced by the clothing worn by the computer generated image, and clothing stereotypes literally altered the way they saw people – the ethnic race of each face was deliberately ambiguous so the participants relied on clothing cues and many decided that people in high-status clothing were white, regardless of the ambiguity of the face. While the results of the study challenge a widely held belief that perception of race is a simple judgment, based purely on a person’s facial features, there is also fascinating information about how clothing influences the judgements that we make about individuals.

As an example, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Steve Jobs once thought about getting all Apple staff to wear a uniform like Japanese companies do. Despite being persuaded against this by the almost universal rejection of his idea by his workforce, he went on to establish a personal ‘uniform’ of jeans and black turtleneck sweater which has gone on to become an industry standard with around 70% of IT people adopting the dress code of chinos and polo-shirt. The new CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, is fitting right in by wearing dark-collared polo shirts for the cameras, making clear his identification as a ‘geek’ rather than an ‘exec’ which allows Silicon Valley to embrace him as Jobs’ successor.

As Gok Wan produces the ‘perfect’ flattering dress for Sainsbury’s and M&S claim theirs is even more perfect, spare a thought for the many women who don’t get to dress in a particularly feminine fashion at work. It’s still possible to look great and dress for practicalities, with a few tips on how to choose casual clothing:

1.    Buy the best jacket you can afford – a badly fitting one looks like you’re wearing a sack. If you work in an environment where you have to move around a lot, choose a jacket with sleeves that can be zipped off to make a gilet for warmer moments. Reversible jackets allow you to ring the changes on your appearance at no extra cost.

2.    T-shirts make a work wardrobe special – stick to bright clear colours and set them off with antique brooches if you’re allowed to wear jewellery – this gives an impression of class without cost.

3.    Where possible, colour-coordinate your scarf, hat, gloves, belt and shoes. Brown leather is the absolute gold standard for classic dressing, and can be teamed with a bright scarf, hat and glove set to give a fashionable look for little cost.

It’s always worrying for parents when a child dislikes their new school, or dreads the beginning of another school year. It can seem inexplicable: the child may enjoy the subjects they are studying, and have friends they are looking forward to seeing again, but even so, they may feel ‘down’, worried and even become tearful and frightened at the thought of school.

There are several ways to help a nervous or unhappy child get over the first days of the new term:

Memory banks for both sexes – instead of forcing your child to think forward, encourage them to think backwards: creating a scrapbook about the summer which records their best memories of the school break can be a good way of getting them into the groove of school again. The best way to use a scrapbook is to fill it from the front to the back with memories and from the back to the front with plans, so that a child can prepare pages for school trips, for birthday parties in the months ahead and for half-term ideas, all of which balance out the fun of school and the fun of holidays.

Self esteem for girls – sometimes it’s low self-esteem that triggers a bout of fear so taking a daughter for a haircut, or helping her revamp her wardrobe can be enough to remove the feeling of inadequacy. Don’t suggest it as an answer though, just plan a family trip to the hairdressers or suggest that you go through her school clothing with her while you talk over the problem … that way you can suggest a couple of items that would add to her clothing choices. For older girls, try offering a budget and letting them have a friend round to shop online together – this allows them to exercise the power of choice and to work out how to get the most for their money, both attributes that boost self-esteem.

Self-esteem for boys – often boys struggle with their feelings, so getting them involved in an activity where they can express their emotions, such as drama, can be the simplest way to release fears and tensions around school. Sports, unsurprisingly, are also a great safety valve, but rather than football or after-school activities, enrol him in a mixed age sport like a martial art. A class where they will be able to see and hear older people than themselves coping with challenges, making fools of themselves and getting over it, and winning and losing in public gives them the chance to learn the skills they need to feel secure at school. A martial art also teaches boys how to care for their appearance and clothing and to be polite in public: key features of a successful school career.

Many women find themselves struggling to make good clothing choices when they are juggling home and childcare, and given that it’s just been revealed that women are still paid around £500 less a year than men, and many are also having to provide support to elderly relatives, it’s even more important to get the best from a clothing budget that has to go from home to school to work and back again.

No pressure buying

Buying online is a great way to be able to take your time. Rather than dragging the kids round the shops, or feeling pressured to make swift choices so you can get back to do childcare or elder supervision, shop at home with a glass of wine and only buy when you feel ready to do it!

No sweat choices

Choosing navy blue or grey or black as a base colour and then picking three coordinating colours to go with that base, means everything works together. Pick a simple dress in your base colour, and then choose a V-necked long sleeved T-shirt to go over it in one of your three coordinating colours. Add a pair of leggings or thick tights in your second coordinating colour. Choose a scarf and belt in your third colour. With the addition of black tights, a black T-shirt and a white short sleeved shirt, you’ve got six outfits all based on the same basic dress. For more ideas see the Uniform Project where one dress with accessories is taken through 365 days.

Nimble clothing

Lay out your outfit the night before you want to wear it, including the shoes and underwear you need. Then put beside it a cold weather option (scarf, pashmina, cardie) and a hot weather option (sunhat, sunglasses, sandals instead of boots) and whatever happens, you will be ready to rock in good time for the school run!

In a few weeks everybody will be heading back to school: for some it will be the first school day of their lives, for others it’s a familiar routine that still causes stress and hardship, but for all there are simple tips to help prevent the September blues.

Save money

•    Look out for Buy One Get One Free (BOGOF) offers on everything from school stationery through to shoes. Even if you can’t use the supplies in your own family, you can save money by buying with another parent or student and splitting the cost. Uniform clothing can be a real cost, but shopping around delivers real savings. You’d be surprised what you can find: quite a few shoe shops are even offering BOGOF deals on trainers in August so planning ahead can save you quite a bit.
•    Look at the extra-curricular activities you want to do, or your child is interested in, and work out what supplies are needed. Find out if you can buy in bulk for things like art activities, when an order for aprons, paper, paints and so on could be placed on behalf of half a dozen students, leading to free delivery and major discounts on cost.
•    Sort through your wardrobe or the child’s wardrobe and pick out what can be used again; put what is too small through the free small ads in your local paper to try and make a bit of cash, and anything worn out can be taken to a charity shop. This makes room for new clothing and might even raise a little cash to put towards it.

Save time

•    Get hold of the school calendar (often to be found on the school website) and note down all significant dates: first day of term, inset days, parent/teacher days etc. Add them to a family calendar so that you all know when you need to be together for certain events and also when you need to be around to cover days off school. Work out your back-up plan for illness (yours, the teacher’s, that of a child in your care).
•    Plan your morning and afternoon school runs. It can be good to organise a library stop one day a week so the student can use the reference section/internet/borrow books – doing it the same day every week can mean it becomes a habit that means a bit of extra homework/project work gets done without needing to nag or self-motivate.
•    Make a plan for storage: some material that comes home from school needs to be kept as coursework that will be marked at the end of the year; some needs to be kept for sentimental reasons (like those first big paintings that every parent treasures); and some probably has to be quietly jettisoned so that it doesn’t clutter up the house. Having a storage box, a scrap book and other necessary filing organised can mean you don’t have to worry about where the right stuff is months down the line.

Simple plans and money-saving ideas can make returning to school simpler, cheaper and much more fun!

One of the biggest changes to the workplace has been the way that the different generations have absorbed, and adapted, the rules of workplace clothing. While we probably can’t identify the subtle differences (called signifiers in sociology) that tell us how old a colleague is, we can all spot them.

All this really matters if you’re an older person wanting to stay in employment but feeling like you’re being put on the shelf, or a younger person who feels ready for promotion but gets passed over – in both cases, the way you dress might be sending signals to people that you just don’t understand.

The four workplace generations

The Disciplined Generation – Those who entered the workplace after the Second World War are often considered to be the most disciplined employees ever. They recognise authority and enjoy structure and many of them will have either worked in the same organisation all their lives or built their own organisation, team or department from scratch early in their working careers. Their clothing is conservative, and often uses colours that were popular when they were young, navy, forest green, battleship grey and camouflage beige – in other words, the colour of uniforms worn in the war.

Baby Boomers – This term has become common in the UK, although it’s American in origin. Many Boomers are heading more or less happily for retirement or semi-retirement. They were the first generation to rebel against clothing norms and often express their sense of self by either dressing very casually (hippy) or by flaunting designer labels and sharp styling in a reaction against the previous generation.

Generation X – Sharper in dress than their Boomer parents, the Xers like to keep their rebellion for outside work. They work hard and play hard and bounce from job to job rather than sticking to any one company. Personal expression is important but an Xer is more likely to have an individual style arising from tattoos, a unique haircut or distinctive make up than from clothing choices. Generation X is the T-shirt generation and more than any other will wear a mixture of casual and smart in the workplace.

Generation Y – This generation are the workplace babies – and they are often deeply quirky in their clothing choices, opting to express Emo, Goth, Skater or other alternative lifestyles through clothing, to focus on fair trade or recycled clothing or to buy individually tailored or previously worn or vintage items.

If you’re a Y and you want to be taken more seriously, tone down your clothing but opt for a sharp haircut – it adds a couple of years to your age and makes you look like an Xer. If you’re a member of the Disciplined Generation and you want to hang on to your job, jettison your usual clothing colours: move into black if you have to wear a suit and tone it with a maroon or golden tie which drops you straight down into the Boomer model – if clothing choices are more relaxed, look at wearing polo-shirts in colours that give you warmth: russet, pink, orange. Allow your shoes and belt or bag and shoes to be unmatched – coordinating shoe colour, belt colour, bag and earring colour together is a clear sign of age that can pin you down as an older man or women to any viewer.

Getting a summer job is a great beginning – but how do you turn it into a permanent job? Dressing like a permanent member of staff is one of the easiest ways to fit into the culture of an organisation. This has two major advantages: it gives you a chance to see how well you fit in over the long term and it allows you to attend interviews elsewhere without it ringing big bells that you’re hunting down another job in your lunch break!

Revamp your wardrobe by looking at what co-workers wear and investing in similar items. Start small: a new shirt or polo-shirt and wear it with your regular clothing, and then add one item at a time for example, work-based trousers that make you look more like a permanent member of the team.

As you start to fit in, people are likely to treat you more like a permanent member of staff and that means you’re more often going to be considered as part of the team, not as an accessory to the team, which gives you a more embedded profile in the organisation. And again, dressing like the people who have permanent jobs is more likely to ensure that you are appropriately dressed for other jobs you’re going for in the same industry.

Of course this kind of investment isn’t free, so it’s important to ensure you can afford your new work clothing. Buying online is a good way to invest in new work clothing, as you can often find bargains or discounts on multiple purchases without having to miss out on bonding with your workmates by going shopping in your lunch break.

87% of men surveyed by Land’s End thought that the polo shirt was the male equivalent of the little black dress. Over recent decades it’s slipped from being the famous clothing of famous sportsmen (like Fred Perry) to become the clothing worn by men watching sport! But it’s still a top garment for men, and combines comfort and luxury, style and sporting endeavour in a way that almost no other casual clothing item ever can.

The polo shirt is also a favourite gift, as it’s so easy to buy for a husband, son or boyfriend as the small, medium or large sizing means anybody can guess at the right size to give as a present.

And while companies seem to be stepping back from casual clothing, the polo shirt is holding its own. In 2004 nearly 48% of American companies allowed T-shirts and jeans in the workplace, by 2007 this had dropped to 37% and at the beginning of this year it had declined again to 28%, but the polo-shirt has remained as popular as ever and isn’t being classed as too casual, just as ‘smart casual’ so it meets a man’s needs for fun and career prospects.

In a week when a Glaswegian school has asked parents to buy baggy school clothes to ‘deter paedophiles’ the simple act of purchasing clobber for kids has become a difficult subject to discuss and shopping trips have become more of a battleground than ever.

The Scottish secondary school in question sent a letter to parents which contained the claim that ‘sex offenders might take pictures of schoolboys in tight trousers.’ Local police say there is no evidence of any incidents in the area that could be related to clothing or even to children. Short skirts have also been ruled out by the school and there’s a suggestion that if parents don’t stick to the suggested dress code, their children could be forced to miss out on school trips.

Parents have branded the letter ‘paranoid’ and a spokesman for the Parent Teacher Council said, ‘Many parents – and indeed young people themselves – are keen to have a dress code in school which requires everyone in the school community to dress in a way which is appropriate for a working environment.’

So what is a good dress code for schools? Sensible clothing such as polo-shirts, in a range of sizes, colours that can be washed and worn easily by active young people, and a sensitivity to different cultural preferences and to the needs of disabled children are all important. What nobody has suggested, until now, is that children should dress to avoid the attention of predatory individuals.