The weather is unpredictable and driving can become unpredictable too … whether we’re a passenger or a driver, it’s vital to be prepared for changeable weather and poor road conditions, particularly because traffic police suggest that during bad weather the majority of collisions would have been preventable with better preparation.

The first thing is to remember that speed limits on road signs are maximum ones, set for ideal road conditions when the surface is dry and the temperatures are warm. Slick surfaces require a longer stopping distance and poor visibility can result in collisions.

Top tips for safe driving include:

1. Checking road and weather conditions before departure and, if necessary, postponing travel.
2. Ensuring the vehicle has enough fuel to reach the destination with some to spare for detours.
3. Taking a mobile phone, blankets, food and water and sensible clothing is essential – remember that you may need layers to keep you warm and then allow you to cool down as temperatures change.
4. A winter jacket in a high vis colour may be a life-saver in poor weather if somebody has to leave the vehicle to put out a warning triangle.
5. If you do have to leave a vehicle, and it’s never recommended, then keeping warm and dry is vital: warm hats, high visibility clothing and gloves and socks with good thermal properties will allow people to keep their body temperature at appropriate levels while out in the weather.
6. Take a clockwork torch so that you can use it if you have to leave the vehicle, and remember to pack a first aid kit in the body of the vehicle so that any small problems can be taken care of without having to pull off the road and open the boot.

Hoodies don’t work for everyone. Your gran might not be comfortable in something that she associates with heavyweight fighters clambering into the ring for televised boxing matches. Your teenage nephew may have strong ideas about what a hoodie should look like: and given how easily kids become mocking or outright hostile if clothing doesn’t fit perfectly into the current style, he may be right to worry.

On the other hand, a sweatshirt is uncontroversial. From cute girls, to crusty elders, it’s eminently wearable. It’s warm and comfortable and the elasticated cuffs and snug hem ensure that cold winds don’t invade the garment to cause chills and discomfort. But because it’s not bulky, a sweatshirt still looks good under a jacket or fleece. And when you head indoors, the weave radiates heat away from your body so that you can cool down rapidly, unlike a wool sweater that can remain uncomfortably warm and sweatily prickly.

When choosing a sweatshirt for another, the colour is really vital. Blue works for almost everyone; black is good for teenagers and if you’re confident about colour, you can push the boat out and choose something that enriches winter skin, such as a rosy red shade for pale redheads, a rich tangerine for brunettes or even a fuchsia shade for those with greying hair.

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%.

This is the time of year when parents start asking who is going to visit whom for Christmas. It’s a real snake pit: do you go to your own parents or instead stay with your boyfriend/girlfriend’s family? If you’re a senior, do you ask the kids to visit again, or admit that you’d rather stay with a friend/take a cruise/sit at home in your underwear and watch TV?

In any case, one feature of the holidays will be photos – the obligatory family picture that gets filed in the family album. What do you wear for the photo – and if you have little children, what should they wear?

1.    Begin by deciding on the basic theme of the photo – when it will be taken and does that mean it will be casual or dressy? If it’s over the dining table, take the photo at the beginning of the meal not the end, when gravy splashes and family bickering may have spoilt the tablecloth and the mood.
2.    Browse online to pick some colour themes: black and white look a bit like a funeral but festive red and green don’t suit everyone. If you can suggest a basic colour scheme to everybody who will be in the photo, it’s a nicer way of reminding them to dress up than just asking them to look smart! If your family are totally non-cooperative, ordering individually monogrammed Christmas polo shirts or hoodies for everyone can be one way to get them to look reasonable in the photo album!
3.    Remember that whether shopping or appearing in photos, children have short attention spans so get everything ready in advance, and rather than dragging them round the shops, put together some outfits online and then let them choose from the items you’ve already pre-selected: it’s a two minute job and nobody gets stressed.
4.    Get everybody to try on their clothes for the photo well in advance of the day, so that tears or stains, grubby collars or outgrown items can all be dealt with before they become a last-minute crisis.

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.

The New Straits Times reports an interesting fact – Japan’s energy crisis, following the earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster this year, has been partly addressed by changing the country’s dress code!

Replacing the traditional two- or even three-piece suit generally worn by both men and women in Japanese offices, instructions were given to all staff to dress casually as there was not enough energy to allow air-conditioning systems to run in offices. Government departments led the way by having ministers turn up for work in cotton trousers and polo-shirts. Amazingly this may save between 40-60% of the energy costs for an office building, as that is the level of energy required to cool a building to acceptable levels for formal clothing wear.

It’s not unusual to walk into a government building in the UK and find it uncomfortably chilly, as the air conditioning is often set to formal wear and staff can be seen wearing cardigans or fleeces over their clothing because it’s so chilly. Perhaps many organisations could take a leaf out of the Japanese book and consider offering their staff the chance to wear polo-shirts in summer, and jumpers in winter so that cooling and heating systems aren’t put under such strain and company profits aren’t eaten away by controlling the building’s environment unnecessarily. This could save the organisation money, and allow individuals to spend less on clothing by wearing casual items that are more appropriate to the daily weather conditions.

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.

For men, New York has much more effect on street fashion than Paris, although London still generally carries the day with male tailoring. So for next spring, guys will be finding their partners trying to get them into double-breasted leather jackets and coats (think DI Gene Hunt) and quite a bit of khaki worn with striped shirts. Desert boots are back and Tommy Hilfiger has a massive number of new polo-shirt colourways. Michael Bastian has a James Dean influenced collection, including motorcycle jackets, of course, with rain-washed striped shirts and T-shirts, aviator sunglasses and surf shorts (?)

There was a focus on quality with relaxed styling being crucial – polo shirts flapped more at the waist than in recent years and trousers were bulkier too, with less skinny legged jeans appearing in the casual sections of the collections.

The road trip look turned up in the Nautica show too, so board shorts and leather boat shoes alternated with a lot of smart blue and white, referencing the navy, and some exciting bad weather jackets in surprising shades of yellow and orange, like the snorkel parkas recently only seen in South Park animations.

It’s the time of year when teenagers migrate to their new homes: student dorms, digs, shared flats and other accommodation where they will live (and maybe learn) for the next few years.

New students are easy to spot: they arrive laden with possessions and with Mum and Dad in tow – some have packed the family cars to the roof, others have even hired a van to help them move in, but how useful is all that equipment?

This year it seems there are fewer flat screen TVS and smaller cases of new clothing as the recession continues to bite. Vast amounts of new stationery have been purchased though: retailers report good sales although all more towards the ‘essentials’ than the ‘luxury’ end of the market.

In the USA, students (and their parents) are expected to spend $808 on clothing, electronic items and furnishings for their first year of college life in 2011 and Edinburgh University reckons students should budget on spending around £13 a week on clothes.

All students are looking for ways to stretch their budgets and seeking out good deals and saving money on college clothing can help them, and their parents, to make the best of the money available.

Ensuring that a student has a sensible coat and boots that will keep them warm and dry in a climate that may be unfamiliar to them, and summer clothing that can double as simple sportswear all help save money on the long run.

Choose T-shirts that can be worn to the bar or to play a game of football, and polo-shirts that double up for seminar attendance, cinema trips and attending interviews for part-time jobs to boost the budget. Ensuring the student has lots of socks and underwear can really help them save money on laundry (and maybe even mean they don’t save up all their dirty washing to bring home with them) and some parents are buying in bulk so that they can replace stained or shredded T-shirts when those rare visits home occur. It means that they can be sure their child has clothing that coordinates together and is easy to wash and wear.

Don’t let your new student take a printer to college until they’ve investigated the costs of printing on campus – with student union cards, many colleges and academic libraries can print reports and papers more cheaply than the student can.

Most of us have a few pieces of wool or wool-mix clothing in our wardrobes: it might be as simple as a woolly hat, or a couple of cardigans, a pashmina or smart jacket or a wool-blend suit for interviews, but in recent weeks wool prices have double and this is pushing up the cost of many kinds of wool clothing, with the price of a man’s suit expected to rise by up to 15% in the next few months. Apparently this is being driven both by the cost of raising sheep and by a desire from wealthy Chinese people to own wool suits!

There are a number of ways to keep costs down: you can buy alternatives to wool such as the 100% synthetic fleeces that are as warm as wool, easier to wash and not itchy; change your look eg by wearing hoodies instead of cardies, and you can learn to take better care for the wool you do have.

Caring for Wool Clothing

1.    Give any wool item 24 hours between wearings to give the fibres a chance to expand back to their original shape, this stops them pilling and/or compressing to become flat.

2.    Buy padded hangers for wool or wool-mix suits and other items and hang them with buttons and zips fastened.

3.    Use a soft brush to take dust and dirt from wool clothing before putting it away.

4.    When cleaning, check the label. Most clothing manufacturers recommend dry-cleaning, but some garments can be hand-washed and a few can even be machine washed. All wet wool should be dried at room temperature away from direct heat.