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.