Next time you move house, the removal men might make you an offer you can’t refuse: to take away your unwanted good quality clothing and shoes for free!

The items donated on moving days will go to a Pickfords warehouse where the NSPCC’s recycling partner Clothes Aid will pick them up. For every tonne collected, Clothes Aid will donate £300 to the NSPCC.

The new national fund-raising partnership is a first for the removal and storage firm and will allow the NSPCC to raise awareness of its helplines and other support systems via the removal teams who visit homes and businesses throughout the UK.

The linkage of national firms and national charities is becoming almost commonplace now, but local charities can also benefit from links to local businesses and your firm might organise something as simple as a packed lunch day once a week, when staff donate the money they would have spent on buying lunch to the good cause, right through to sponsoring clothing for charity workers that bears the logo of both company and charity.

In a new approach to cancer prevention, the major British charity Cancer Research is working with Bauer Media and the Asos clothing retailer in its SunSmart campaign.

This is an annual campaign run by the charity, that focuses on teaching young people (between the ages of 16 and 24) the risks of sun cancer and how to protect themselves while still having a good time in the sunny weather.

The fashion input is an online ‘tool’ that Asos have developed – it provides fashion and clothing advice to the user, based on their skin type, the current weather forecast and the event for which they want to choose an outfit. To encourage fashion aware young people to use the tool regularly, they are also being included in a weekly draw – the winner of which receives £100 of vouchers to spend in Asos.

The tool is also being promoted in magazines and on the radio.

Workplaces could use a similar technique to promote safe sun use in their employees –because clothing such as a baseball cap is a great way to protect skin from too much UV exposure. One technique might be a simple chart in the reception area or cafeteria or near the water cooler that shows the weather forecast for 48 hours ahead and lists sensible work clothing to deal with the weather conditions.

One of the problems with smart business suits is that you tend to have to stop wearing them long before they are worn out. There’s nothing worse than somebody wearing the same suit week in and week out for years, or seeing the same shirt being washed and worn for months on end.  But what can you do with discarded clothing that still has months of good life in it?

In the USA, college students are being given the chance to ‘inherit’ smart clothing to wear to interviews. In 2009, a Kentucky college received more than 700 donated items from the community and outfitted more than 100 students. The so called Career Closet provides clothing from smart-casual polo-shirts and chinos for work placement interviews and career fairs through to fully formal skirt suits and laundered shirts for graduate level academic interviews.

The Closet also helps past graduates build a business clothing wardrobe for their first job, so that they don’t have the extra expense of buying new clothing as well as moving back home and job searching.

The claim being made in the USA is that many students show up for interviews looking unprofessional, because they either can’t afford dress clothes or don’t know how to look the part. This can be especially true of students who come from a family or culture where business clothing is not familiar.

In the USA, the students who take clothes are given the choice of leaving donations and that money is then passed to a shelter for the homeless. Many do leave money in return for their new wardrobe and others volunteer to help sort and organise the clothing that is donated.

In the UK, many colleges are trying to find ways to help their graduates through the lean years after graduation – perhaps your company could contact a local centre of further education and see if they would be interested in holding a ‘Business Wardrobe’ to which your staff can donate their worn, but still wearable, clothing?

The credit crunch has delivered a new way of doing fashion to those of us who don’t have much disposable income to devote to clothing. It’s called ‘slow fashion’ and it’s like the slow food movement.

What it means is clothes at disposable prices have lost their appeal and ‘made to last’ garments are taking their place as people make fewer and more carefully planned purchases.

Things to look out for are:

•    ’Trans-seasonal’ clothes such as gilets and sleeveless fleeces that can be worn over T-shirts on a cool summer day or over sweaters on a really chilly autumn or winter one
•   Organic fabrics which are considered to last longer, and damage the environment less
•    ‘New’ fabrics such as bamboo, which are long-lasting and tend to come from sustainable sources
•    Classic styling – things like Breton stripes, classic white T-shirts, enduring standards such as pale denim and navy jackets all keep their value and doesn’t suffer fashion ‘fall out’ whatever might be currently popular.

To make the right choices for a slow fashion wardrobe, ensure you pick one or two colours only and that everything you buy can be tied into those colours, focus on traditional styles rather than extreme fashion cuts and colours, and choose the best quality that you can, so that garments last longer and look good for their whole life.

A firm based in Halifax, Yorkshire, has undergone a rebranding and as a result, it’s helped fund the Yorkshire Air Ambulance (YAA).

Casual clothing saves lives

The construction company had dozens of bags uniform clothing with the old logo, ranging from health and safety wear, through to fleeces and hats and casual clothing – and it recycled them all through YAA which works with a partner to actually sell all donated clothing overseas. This process raises up to £250,000 for the charity to fund the flying ambulance service which helps save the lives of people like distant hill farmers and those stranded by weather or accidents in Yorkshire’s picturesque but remote areas.

Back to school for teachers

On the other hand, uniform could be a painful issue for schools. The new Education Secretary Michael Gove wants a dress code for teachers because he thinks both parents and pupils respond better to a smartly-dressed teacher.

But while headteachers can establish a dress code they are not able to impose clothing rules that could be considered as sexual, racial or religious discrimination. And that’s not the only problem – in 2008, a maths teacher was fined after insisting on his right to wear trainers and tracksuit bottoms rather than a suit. His argument was that he had taught at the school in question for a decade and a half without discipline problems and should be allowed to continue as he was. While the matter was resolved, it doesn’t bode well for the future – we expect children to try and contravene rules about uniforms, but not teachers!

Andy Murray has switched his clothing supplier to Adidas this year, which may be related to his having worn retro Fred Perry clothing: a subtle polo-shirt and relaxed shorts combo, last year, in tribute to the last male Brit to win the tournament – his failure to win it himself was partly attributed to ‘pressure’ so maybe his new Adidas kit will help him relax.

Pressure of a different kind has been seen at the World Cup – England’s players may not have survived the pressure – and whether the manager will is still open to question, but pressure clothing has been the big feature of the footballers kit this time around.  Strictly speaking it’s called compression clothing  and it helps athletes resist fatigue because it encourage oxygen circulation around the body, meaning that the blood carries away lactic acid from tired muscles. Lactic acid is a major cause of cramp and so anything that helps tired players to cope with the schedule (finalists will have played 7 games in 30 days) is going to be considered both a practical and a psychological aid.

Meawhile, Serena Williams has been piling the pressure on to her opponents at Wimbledon – playing in long acrylic fingernails and huge dangling earrings is seen by sports psychologists as the reigning champion saying ‘Do what you like, I can beat you wearing party clothing.’  She’s worn a stunning range of casual clothing, from red and white outfits through to sparkling silver nails, and it all helps keep her opponents on the back foot.

The staff of a DHL depot have received an award after adopting an army platoon that was serving in Afghanistan.

The depot staff raised funds through a range of events and workplace competitions which was then used to purchase MP4 players and iPods, magazines, sweets, biscuits and other dry foods and even wholesale casual clothing to help make the lives of the soldiers a little more comfortable.

In 2009, they raised over £20,000 for a variety of causes including the Ava platoon, demonstrating how workplace initiatives can really help, not only by raising funds but by boosting morale and creating relationships that sustain people coping with extreme hardship.

The depot has been granted the Royal British Legion’s Friends of The Forces corporate award for its “extraordinary” work with the soldiers and DHL Droitwich’s Community Liaison Officer said, ‘At the end of the day, you may think you’re having a bad day at the office but it doesn’t compare when it’s hot, you’re getting shot at, blown up and you’ve got sand in every crevice of your body … If all firms could do what we did it would do a lot of good.’

Workplace charity initiatives range from supporting local playgroups by donating leftover paint and paper for creative play through to massive fundraising campaigns by national organisations to fund hospital units or mentoring opportunities offered to individuals ranging from potential athletes to disabled young people to ex-offenders or those recovering from serious illnesses.

Earlier this week, two schoolgirls, dressed in Edwardian clothing, buttonholed David Cameron on the steps of Number Ten.  They sold him a rose, continuing a tradition that has run for nearly a hundred years – since 1912 when Queen Alexandra started the Charities’ Charity by selling a rose to the Prime Minister of the day, who put it in his buttonhole.

The two 16-year-olds attend Francis Holland School sixth form, and were chosen for their exceptional charity work – both have been both volunteers and fundraisers for charities while studying at the school. They wore the traditional white dresses, pink sashes and straw boaters that have been the hallmark of the Charities’ Charity since it was set up by the Queen to sell silk roses, made by London flower girls to raise funds for her preferred causes. Today the recipient gets a rose pin made of enamel and Alexandra Rose Charities help  more than 250 other charities, many of which are very small and local.

The Charities’ Charity may have been one of the first to use specialist clothing to raise funds, but today nearly every charity with a national profile has charity-branded clothing such as slogan printed T-shirts, hats with embroidered logos or even ‘gimmick’ clothing like Pudsey Bear’s spotty bandana.

In New York, a female banker is taking her former employers to court over sacking her because she was ‘too attractive’.  Debrahlee Lorenzana is claiming that Citibank fired her because her pencil skirts and fitted suits were distracting male colleagues from their work.

According to her complaint, she was ordered not to wear high heels because they drew attention to her figure and stopped men from working, but female colleagues who wore similar clothes were not told to change their appearance because, according to Ms Lorenzana, they were less attractive than her. She was also given a list of the clothes her employer wanted her to stop wearing to the office – she was asked by her employer not to wear: turtleneck tops, pencil skirts, fitted business suits, or other properly tailored clothing and that she shouldn’t wear high heels either.

So what’s the law? Well it varies from country to country, but it is discriminatory to insist that people dress in a fashion that is different to their colleagues, so if everybody else is wearing casual clothing, you can’t insist one person dresses formally if they are doing the same job. On the other hand, work-specific clothing can be insisted on, particularly if people do jobs that have health or safety implications: catering staff must dress in a way that guarantees hygiene so aprons and hats are not just required but legally stipulated, and builders and other construction workers need to have safety clothing that protects them, and the public, from harm.

In the past week or so, literally thousands of fake football shirts have been pouring into England, but they haven’t been reaching their purchasers.

Counterfeiting experts and representatives of the major clothing companies are working with the staff of the international mail sorting office in Coventry to intercept fake replica shirts and T-shirts that have been manufactured in China, Thailand and Malaysia and sold online. It’s a multi-billion pound illegal trade that doesn’t just leave fans out of pocket: it’s been linked to drug trafficking and child labour.

Faked national and Premier League football shirts, cost anything from £9 to £30 from online counterfeiters while the genuine article, this year, costs between £35 and £58.  In 2009, over 50,000 counterfeit replica shirts, worth over £1 million, were seized in the UK, leaving a lot of disappointed customers and with the World Cup starting this week, that figure is expected to double in 2010.

What to look out for

•    Check that logos are real – even online you can often spot that a logo has been reversed, or isn’t entirely accurate.
•    Check that the website you’re visiting is legitimate – where possible, buy from retailers and services you know already or have been personally recommended to you.
•    Make sure you know the trader’s full address – especially if the company is based outside the UK. Don’t assume an internet company is based in the UK just because its web address has ‘uk’ in it – check out the physical address and phone number.
•    If the item or service is over £100 then consider paying by credit card this gives you some protection in the case of non-delivery or seizure by customs etc.
•    Look for websites that have a secure payment system (known as an encryption facility) – usually shown as a padlock image onscreen when you reach the payment stage.