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When you see celebrities getting off a plane, they never look like the shambling dishevelled wrecks we are when we fly. Going first class helps, but celebs are also clever about what they wear on flights. Boldy printed T-shirts are a top choice for two reasons:
1. You can dress them up or down
2. They are easy to transport
And a third reason, that might not matter to Paris Hilton or Victoria Beckham, but does to the average traveller – they are economical to buy and clean.
There’s really only one downside – T-shirts do tend to wrinkle. Here’s how to get rid of the creases before wearing a T-shirt when you don’t have an iron handy:
1. Put your T-shirt in a tumble dryer with a slightly damp towel – after fifteen minutes the towel will be dry and the shirt free of wrinkles
2. No tumble dryer? Hang your T-shirt on the shower rail and run the shower as hot as it goes – after a few minutes the creases will drop from the T-shirt. If your wrinkled garment is a screenprinted T-shirt remember to turn it inside out before putting in the tumble-dryer to prolong its life.
3. No shower? How about this – dampen the most wrinkled parts of the garment, and then dry them using a hair dryer set on medium – put your hand between the front and back of the T-shirt to allow the air to circulate faster – this literally blasts the creases away.
Polo shirts can also be perked up using this method, especially if they are the 50/50 cotton/polyester polo-shirts which tend not to crease anyway. In winter, heavyweight sweatshirts have the same appeal, but if you want to wear one that you’ve packed for a flight, don’t fold it in your carry-on bag, instead, roll it up with the sleeves crossed over the front – that way you don’t get any square creases that are obvious when you wear it.
The England team have revealed their new 2010 World Cup strip, which is based on the 1966 World Cup winning shirt. It’s a red jersey with the standard Three Lions logo which has above it a raised red embroidered star, to celebrate England’s one World Cup victory.
Using embroidery in this way is a classic style that adds intricacy without making a garment look too fussy. Standard uses for embroidery include:
Promotional wear – like the England strip described above. Because embroidery has a long pedigree, it carries echoes of tradition and ceremony. But as contemporary embroidery is designed and carried out using computer technology, there is no limit to the size, shape and colour of the text that can be sewn to a garment and still be legible.
Brand images – company logos and monograms are commonly used on work clothing – where a personalised uniform may carry the staff member’s name as well as the company logo.
Monogramming – famously, young women embroidered their initials on sheets and pillowcases in their ‘hope’ chests and then, when they found a husband, rushed to add his initials to their monogram before the wedding. Today monogramming is seen on everything from plush towels in a spa through to the pockets of the smart shirts worn by City traders.
Embroidery is one of the most durable ways to decorate clothing, as well as being one of the most impressive looking, which is probably why the England designers have chosen to embroider the single red star, for the 1966 win, so elegantly over the England symbol on the football shirts they hope will be worn in another victorious final.
Most of us are familiar with the kind of promotional clothing used by fun runs and other events, like concerts. Right now the internet is packed with a variety of T-shirts that have been designed to raise funds for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. But many items of promotional clothing, like printed or embroidered T-shirts, have more value than just their fund-raising potential.
• First, these items of clothing commemorate an event or person – this gives them a sentimental value.
• Second, if they are well-designed garments, they also have a chance of developing ‘collector’ status – this is where something that was designed to recognised a current event ends up becoming a nostalgic emblem.
• Third, items like embroidered caps or printed messenger bags have recently developed cult status: this happens when the design is iconic and much copied, but the original item is coveted for its rarity and brand status.
A business can’t necessarily aim to develop these kinds of value in their clothing, but it can always aim to choose designs, colours, styles and qualities of clothing that might help it achieve added value in its chosen staff uniform or promotional clothing.
Clothing carries a lot of social symbology – the hoodie, reviled as the clothing choice of anti-social youth, is also the garment of choice for the boxing fraternity, in fact it’s hard to find a picture of Amir Khan clothed, where he’s wearing anything else!
T-shirts are seen as the casual clothing chosen by those who are relaxed and out to have a good time, which is why Durham City Council has chosen them as a reward for good behaviour over Christmas. When drinkers in city pubs by food or a non-alcoholic drink, they are being offered a black T-shirt with an image that resembles a rock band logo, saying Best Bar None, and the hope is that it will cut alcohol related crime by reducing binge drinking. Carol Feenan, Durham County Council Best Bar None Manager, said, ‘The free T-shirts are proving extremely popular amongst both customers and staff alike.’
So if clothing carries such strong images, what does your company’s uniform say about you? Would a new style polo-shirt improve your image of efficiency and calm, or perhaps smarter shirts with an embroidered monogram would help create the air of upmarket service that you wish to convey? Maybe your casual friendly attitude would be better conveyed by a slimline fleece than your current bulky jackets? Choosing uniforms that convey the right social symbology can really help your business generate the right impression.
This week a trio of celebrities: choreographer Arlene Phillips, girlfriend of Arsenal star Theo Walcott – Melanie Slade, and fashion designer Tracey Boyd, revealed their take on classic white T-shirts.
Their designs are part of the Race for Life 2010 collection – raising money for Cancer Research UK. Always a summer wardrobe necessity the collection of white t-shirts comprises three very different styles which will earn money for the charity.
This kind of celebrity/charity tie-in is high profile, but it’s easy for a small business to develop a similar public profile – why not ask a local school or design students from a local college to create a T-shirt for your staff to wear for a sales promotion? Run it like a TV competition, with T-shirt face-offs where the designs are modelled by local dance and drama students, and a voting system and involve the local press in publicising it. You can give the winning T-shirt designer a prize and make a donation to a local charity of their choice to further increase your public profile. Then get the most popular T-shirts printed and worn by your team, it’s a positive investment in your business and a boost to local talent too.
The California-based Hoelzer Reich apparel company has been banned from sponsoring fighters at future UFC and WEC (cage and martial arts fights) events in the UK. Concerns were raised over the company’s “German-themed” apparel worn by fighters as they entered the ring – the symbols used on a shirt worn by a boxer at the weekend appeared to resemble the Iron Cross and a logo closely resembling the SS emblem.
One problem is that such symbology is obviously offensive to many people and using it unintentionally on corporate clothing, or as part of a uniform, could mean a disastrous PR result.
Another problem is that designers, especially young ones, tend to like to work with edgy, provocative material, while businesses trying to build respect and loyalty want solid, respectful symbolism – a lightning flash on a polo-shirt collar might look like it represents speed to the designer, but to the general public it can look very much like a Nazi SS reference.
This is why it’s important, when designing corporate clothing, promotional T-shirts or uniforms, to do some product testing with the workforce and with the public. This can also be a great way to get good publicity – select a short list of designs and ask your customers to vote on which polo-shirt they think your staff would look best in, or offer them a range of T-shirt designs to pick from and give the person who manages to put them in the same preference order as your CEO a prize. While the publicity is good, what’s even better is that you don’t make any mistakes about logos or symbols that then come back to bite you.
If you want T-shirts but don’t have the design skills or the budget to produce an image for them, why not use clothes2order to obtain just what you want at a really good price?
We now have a range of the most popular, funny, satirical and cute T-shirts in the world, pre-designed for you and available to order in a range of prices from the absolute bargain to the luxuriously personalised.
The great advantages of this system are several: the cost is the obvious one, but with pre-designed orders there’s also speed to consider and you can choose the colour and style of your T-shirt, hoodie, or whatever to match with your idea of how you want the final garment to look, to end up with a personalised garment that’s also one of the world’s favourite style tops.
As news breaks that Apple is improving several aspects of its retail store operations for the Thanksgiving/Christmas peak season, what can small businesses learn from such a big retail player?
The first thing is that Apple are moving away from colour-coded T-shirts for different kinds of employee. No reason has been given why, but it’s easy to guess that with consumers ever more likely not to buy high-end goods if they’re given any reason not to, Apple wants sales staff to be as obvious and accessible as possible to potential purchasers.
What can your business learn from this?
If Apple are worried that in a credit crunch, people may not buy from the Apple store just because they can’t immediately identify whether a member of staff is there to sell them something (concierge) or advise them on a purchase choice (creative) perhaps you should be worried too? Often business uniforms or corporate clothing are designed with the workforce in mind, rather than the customer – apparently Apple customers have said they find the different colours of staff T-shirt: light and medium blue, black and orange, just too confusing.
Apple are also going to change the colour their staff wear from time to time, but all staff will now be wearing the same colour
What can your business learn from this?
We tend to think that a business has to stick to a set of colours: the Virgin Atlantic red stewardess uniform, for example, hasn’t changed for 25 years! But refreshing your uniform or corporate clothing can also refresh your customers’ perception of the business and what it delivers, so if you are adding a new service or product, or want to draw attention to a new way of doing things (perhaps you’re moving from Royal Mail to courier service to ensure your customers get their goods regardless of strikes, for example) changing the way your staff are dressed by using a different colour can bring your new profile sharply into customer focus.
You’d be amazed how often customers comment on new promotional clothing items worn by staff and how that can lead to staff up-selling or sharing information about products and services that increased your profit margin. A bright baseball cap worn for the two weeks of a sale, for example, can really drive sales to established customers who ask ‘why are you wearing that hat’ and end up buying more because they’ve been alerted to a bargain.
Wearing a team or group T-shirt has a lot of advantages when undertaking some kind of community activity:
1. It allows group members to identify each other easily and to form relationships if they don’t already know each other
2. Group leaders can spot their team easily and organise them, which is especially important in outdoor settings
3. Printed T-shirts build a sense of community in a group of people and allow them to recognise that they share values and interests
4. Promotional clothing like a T-shirt with a slogan gets your community group message out to the public like almost nothing else can.
But you need to do some research and planning before investing in printed T-shirts for a community group or team.
• Not all T-shirts are the same – when obtaining quotes for the work, make sure you have similar brands and weights of T-shirt in the quotations or you won’t be comparing like with like.
• Check for extra charges – sometimes you have to pay a supplier extra to have more than one location (place where the T-shirt is printed, eg front and back or front and sleeve) and some suppliers aren’t scrupulous about telling you that those locations will incur an extra fee.
• If your T-shirts are to be given away, remember that white blanks are always cheapest and that T-shirts used as gifts or prizes don’t have to cost the earth.
• Make sure you can get a range of sizes to suit the members of your community group – not everybody is a ‘medium’ and it destroys group cohesion if one person isn’t wearing the team T-shirt because you didn’t get large or small enough ones printed.
• Let your team personalise their T-shirts a little – teenagers in particular love to cut off sleeves or wear badges and will often end a group task by writing or drawing on each other’s T-shirts – view it as a compliment and don’t get heavy handed with them.
As every High Street shop has its sales posters and banners declaring anything up to ‘70% off’ there’s been an unexpected knock-on effect for printers and clothing providers.
A sale is not a sale unless it’s communicated to the buying public, and an offer that’s unclear is an offer that isn’t taken up by the purchaser, so printers and printed clothing suppliers everywhere have been seeing new orders for banners, posters, and T-shirts bearing the message of the day.
The smartest retailers are linking their promotional advertising to clothing so as to reinforce the idea that absolute bargains are to be had for hard cash. So T-shirts bearing the message ‘Ask me about our sale’ or ‘20% off everything except the staff!’ are being used to get the shoppers that are actually visiting the high street to part with cash.
Promotional clothing can do much more than this though: it can be used to convey a message about the nature of the product or to share ideas about the brand. ‘Here to help’ or ‘connection expert’ on promotional clothing in a computer store tells people that they can ask questions and expect to get polite and well-considered answers and when people are making major purchases of items that they may not fully understand, putting the potential customer at their ease can make all the difference between a sale and a no-sale.
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Customised Uniforms | Promotional Clothing | Embroidered Polo Shirts | Printed T-Shirts | Embroidered Shirts | Personalised Sweatshirts | Promotional Fleeces | Embroidered Clothing | Screen Printed Clothing
Transfer and Cad Cut Printed Clothing | T-Shirt Printing | Cheap Clothes