British retailers are reporting a zoom in sales of sportswear, particularly the items being seen in the 2012 Olympic adverts on TV (interestingly, there seems to be a surge in purchases of red hair dye too, since Phillips Idowu has been seen sprinting through a shop to buy his signature flame red brand!) but how does should average or less athletes approach the idea of looking good in sportswear.

Obviously your saggy old kit isn’t going to do the job. Most of us would benefit from an upgrade: our baggy T-shirts replaced by crisp new V-neck tees, our old trackies boosted into stylish shorts, but be careful – some styles work only for the ultra-fit. Lycra cycling shorts should be left for those who are at medal status: most of us look better in something that has a more generous cut like mid-length shorts. Running vests and tank tops look fantastic on both men and women too, but only if you have toned arms and abs, otherwise it’s better to cover your deficiencies with a short-sleeved polo-shirt that is kinder to your wobbly bits.

Remember to wear a hat and to wash it regularly so it doesn’t get a sweat ring. Baseball caps are best for sunny weather but those who work out early in the morning may find a snug beanie hat more suitable.

Increasing numbers of businesses are choosing to provide business clothing to their staff, partly as an investment in employees but mainly as a service to clients.

Looking look smart and professional is one reason for this choice, but another is the desire to present a coherent image across the company from website to business literature to staff on the front line.

Now that business workwear is more flexible, it can do much more than carry the company logo. It offers the opportunity to display contact details, convey special offers and deals or just to allow a staff member to be picked out as a distance.

And what about employees, how does this affect them? Many people are keen to move into uniform at times of recession as it decreases the amount they need to spend on work clothing. The most popular uniform clothing with under 30s is the hoodie, closely followed by the T-shirt, while over 30s tend to favour the polo-shirt as workplace clothing and are somewhat more dubious about casual clothing as uniform, with baseball caps being the most disliked item in their wardrobes.

Clothes and appearance generally matter a lot more to women in business than to men – getting the right appearance is great but also career-promoting, so mastering this skill is crucial.

Many women are naïve about the way their clothes come across – in the USA several recent surveys have shown that men are choosing not to employ, or to promote, women based almost entirely on them dressing ‘too sexy’.

What mistakes are women making with business clothing?

The key problems are work clothes that are too tight, or too low cut. While an outfit like that catches the eye, it doesn’t imply you’re ready to do serious work – or to be taken seriously.

Secondary problems come from the diet of fashion and celeb magazines that women read – these promote a ‘Hollywood’ style of dress: peep toe shoes, stilettos, glitter and glitz, which many women mistake for formal clothing – just because you’re dressing up, doesn’t mean you’re dressing for business!

What should women wear?

•    In many environments, to be taken seriously, a skirt suit is the most formal option, especially in winter.
•    In the summer you can opt for smart tailored trousers with a shirt and cardigan or waistcoat, but in winter a formal jacket is better.
•    Crisp cotton shirts imply professionalism and choosing them in pink, blue or other light colours stops them looking like a uniform.
•    Flat shoes or heels are both okay, but those heels should never be more than three inches and open toed shoes should be reserved for a heat-wave only.

If you’re one of the 47% of men and women who say that their working day starts with the stress of deciding what to wear, finding it, and then getting dressed at break-neck speed because you’re running late, help may be at hand.

Two young Irish designers understand your frustration. They have created a new form of clothes hanger, in plastic, that they say ‘slips in and slips in and out of garments as easily as a deer speeds gracefully through the wilds of Africa’ – which is why they’ve called it the Gazelle’ and it’s just won the Easy to Use Design Awards in Dublin. Their design has already been patented across Europe and they are talking to a number of manufacturers about mass production. Soon you will be able to slip your polo-shirt from the hanger more swiftly than you can decide which polo to wear.

Until the gazelle hits the shops, you can speed up your morning by:

1.    Hanging up your clothes and putting them in cupboards in a colour-coordinated fashion – put all the whites together, and all the blues, and so on. You have more time to do this in the evening and at weekends and simple colour coordination makes it easier to find what you want in the morning, when you are short of seconds, let alone minutes, to rummage.
2.    Arranging shoes on racks, with a sock inside each shoe, when you put them away. This means your socks and shoes always coordinate and you don’t have to spend ages seeking out the matching shoes. It also keeps your shoes looking good longer.
3.    For maximum efficiency, put your clothes away as complete outfits. Put a shirt, trousers or skirt and jacket all on one hanger, with the right shoes underneath and the right underwear on top of the shoes. That way you just get up and dress each morning. Takes more time over the weekend but saves a lot of time in the working week.

The Rugby World Cup will be held in New Zealand this year and the uniform worn by volunteers has just been revealed. It’s a light blue and silver design of track suit, polo-shirt, baseball cap and T-shirt (but, surprisingly, no rugby shirt!) all adorned with the distinctive mangopare (hammerhead shark) and koru (fern frond) designs that incorporate the Maori traditions of strength and fellowship.

Around 7,000 volunteers will wear the kit, and it’s specially designed to help each member of workforce ‘feel they are part of one great team delivering something unique’ as well as being distinctive enough for rugby fans to pick out the volunteers at a distance when they need assistance.

Most volunteers seem pleased with the uniform and keen to wear it when the Cup starts. Volunteer uniforms need to be:

•    Distinctive
•    Comfortable
•   Available in a range of sizes
•    Suitable for all cultures
•    Easy to wash
•    Durable
•    Able to express something about the cause they support.

Most of us wear a uniform all the time, without realising it. We might think that the day we left school we stopped having to wear a set collection of clothing but the pin-striped merchant banker has a uniform, as does the jeans-wearing student, the office girl with her cardigan over a going-out-after-work T-shirt and so on.

Uniforms can be conscious or unconscious and the conscious decisions made by those at the top can affect not just those wearing a uniform but everybody viewing it. This month, Sir Paul Stephenson, Commissioner of the Met, and the UK’s most senior police official hit back at the ‘paramilitary’ style black uniforms being chosen by many constabularies.

He said that for 2012, Olympic year, he was ensuring that Scotland Yard’s police presence was that of traditional ‘British bobbies’ in white shirts so that his cops look ‘…reassuring, not oppressive’.

On the other hand, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey and Sussex have all gone for the ‘black-shirt’ look that is sometimes compared to the 1930s fascist uniform chosen by Sir Oswald Mosley for his acolytes.

So why is the black uniform so popular? It seems that officers find the clothing looks professional and as if they mean business, it’s easier to wash and it gives those wearing it a sense of being properly equipped.

The ‘back to school’ aisles of the supermarkets are bulging already – in fact the very day that schools break up, the shops seem to put up posters reminding their parents that the next term is less than two months away! With cuts being made in school budgets, it’s likely that parents are going to be asked to find more money and that probably means buying more school kit and equipment, more funds for school trips and events, and less free services. Save money by using the opportunities on offer now to buy well in advance. Students can also save big money by focusing their attention on what’s available now.

Buying school uniform can be expensive, and ensuring your child is always properly dressed can be stressful but you can improve your chances of making school days easier by investing in some ‘substitute clothing’ such as plain polo shirts or cotton shirts in the same colour as the ones with the school logo so that if none are put out to wash, you can shove the delinquent into a similar enough piece of clothing to probably get away with it for one day.

Sportswear isn’t just a tick box on a list. Getting enough T-shirts, polos, vests, shorts and track trousers can really make the difference between children taking part in healthy activity and sitting on the sidelines. Whatever the suggested amount of sports clothing, buy double, that means there’s never any ‘my PE kit is in the wash’ excuse for your kids! It may seem harsh, but getting the exercise habit may be one of the best investments you can make for your children.

If your child is entering university, treat them to a formal shirt and jacket for open days and careers fairs. We’re told that there are fewer jobs for graduates and that there will be ever more competition for them, so giving your student offspring a chance to dress their best for the days that they might meet and impress a potential employer could save you many years of having them lounging around at home on Job Seekers Allowance!

In Mansfield Ohio, a new detailed dress code has been drafted for court staff – it’s meant to ‘inspire confidence and respect from the public, create a professional image and install a sense of pride in city government’.

So municipal employees will be denied lip piercings and excessive tattoos. Jeans and T-shirts will be limited to Friday only in office areas.

In the USA any rules about dress codes must be careful not to infringe on First Amendment rights and religious freedoms and Casual Friday has become a contentious issue, because it’s a test of what is acceptable or not – can you wear a shirt, tie and smart jacket on Dress Down Friday if you’re Mormon or is that seen as a non-team choice? Can you turn up in a T-shirt with an overtly religious or controversial sporting message or is that somehow also against the spirit of teamwork?

This is why many companies prefer to impose casual uniforms which are usually a soft-collared top such as a polo-shirt, worn with the employee’s choice of skirt, trousers or jeans. This allows issues of gender, age and cultural equality to be balanced with health and safety issues.

For the first time in five years, what you wear might be influencing the way people think about you politically. Nick Clegg’s sudden popularity boost may be welcome to the Lib Dems, but, as ever, the political commentary has been at least partly about the colour of the tie each candidate was wearing.

Politicians complain about this frivolousness, but the colour of each political party is an important part of political identity.

•    Red has been the colour of the Labour Party since its inception in 1900 because it reflects the radicals of the French Revolution.
•    Traditionally, the Tory party used all three colours of the Union Jack: red, blue and white, but when Labour came along and annexed red, it settled for blue alone, which is the colour many Conservative groupings worldwide have also chosen.
•    The Liberal Dems seem to be going for gold this time around, although in the past they’ve chosen the brighter shade of orange, both of which hark back Liberal Party from which the new Lib Dems have developed.
•    And then there’s the party named after a colour – the Green Party which links its cause to the environment by choosing a colour as its title.

So if you are seen around the workplace in a red tie, people will subconsciously assume you’re a Labour supporter, while your smart blue work shirts suddenly carry an unexpected freight of Tory hinterland. The green spring-like T-shirt that you bought a few weeks ago is no longer ‘Shrek-like’ but suggests environmental associations and your Dad’s favourite shorts in canary yellow are likely to be viewed as his emergence as a nascent Cleggite. If you want to be politically neutral until after 6 May, stick to grey, black and white – grey trousers and a black shirt or jeans and a white hoodie will keep you free of party affiliations.

It’s becoming more difficult to find a job, so here are three top tips on how to survive the world of work:

Pen and paper, not mobile

Write down the names of people you meet and tasks you are given. Nobody will expect you to remember everything. But don’t use your mobile or laptop to check your email or surf the web, or even to store the names and numbers of your new colleagues – many companies worry about the way staff use the web now and looking like a net surfer in your first week can suggest you are not serious about your new job. Leave your phone and laptop in your bag and only use them when you are out of the office at lunchtime.

Dress Code

Remember what you wore for interview? Make sure you have enough clothes to dress similarly for your first week of work – this should be smart trousers with a short or long-sleeved shirt for men, and a skirt and shirt for women. On Friday a lot of people may dress down into polo-shirts or T-shirts but don’t assume that dressing down is your right – it’s better to ensure that you are over rather than underdressed in that first week, and also, over-dressing allows you to be dressed formally enough to cope with anything that’s thrown at you. It’s quite common for companies to take on new staff in weeks when the senior managers are all on leave or at conferences and that can mean that everybody relaxes their dress code. Come Monday, you might be the only person who is casually dressed and the returning bosses will not be happy!

Scent

Remember to avoid wearing perfume, aftershave, or body sprays that might affect others – in your first week you’ll probably have other people hovering over you a lot of the time, checking how you’re doing, and if your scent irritates them, you’ll soon be an unpopular colleague.