Interesting Facts

If we ever needed proof that Brits are getting bigger, here it is:  High street retailer Debenhams is now stocking clothing in sizes up to XXXXXL. (Debenhams say they have begun to stock the 5XL size in male ranges to meet demand.  The new big and tall range goes up to a 64-inch chest and a 20-inch collar. The previous largest size was 3XL, but demand for larger sizes of shirts, suits, tops, casual jackets and trousers has soared by 170% over the last 2 years. If you go to their Big and Tall website, they even list XXXXXXL - 6XL! Now all I can think about is what clothing size the Hulk is.  Does anyone know?)

According to a study carried out by home insurer MORE TH>N women are at their most fashionable around the age of 30. (By this time the average British woman owns 212 items worth around £7,658.  Their wardrobe usually consists of 166 items of clothing (including designer outfits worth £2,399, 7 pairs of designer shoes, costing £2,086, and some, 24 pieces of jewellery worth £2,800. Men on the other hand hit their peak at 36, but will own a staggering of £8,868 worth of clothing, shoes, watches, bags and jewellery by then. However, 1 year later, the value of a person's wardrobe falls, and between the ages of 30 and 50 women see a 26% decrease in the value of their wardrobe and a 70% decrease in the number of designer items.  For men, the value plunge is even more pronounced, dropping by 46% over the same period. This either means everyone develops some common sense, or they have children.)

Australian presenter Karl Stefanovic, who co-presents Channel Nine’s Today show with Lisa Wilkinson, has been wearing the same blue suit – day in, day out, for a year. (He did it to make a point about the ways in which his female colleagues are judged. “No one has noticed,” he said. His co-presenter, Lisa Wilkinson, gave the Andrew Olle media lecture in which she talked about the expectations placed on women in public life. “Today’s media landscape, particularly for women, is one now so focused on the glossy and the glamorous, it often eclipses and undermines everything else,” she told the audience. “When you’re a woman doing breakfast TV, you quickly learn the sad truth that what you wear can sometimes generate a bigger reaction than even any political interview you ever do.” She recounted a reader’s letter in which a viewer told her to “get some style” before reading her reply to that letter: “Please include suggested colours, sleeve lengths, skirt shapes, your preference for...

According to a report “Tailored Wages”, British high-street clothing labels Debenhams, Matalan and The North Face are among the worst high-street clothing shops at paying a fair wage to those who make their products. (The analysis of 40 top European clothing brands showed that many major chains are still doing very little to make sure that workers abroad, who produce their goods, are paid a living wage. The global fashion industry, worth more than £28bn across Europe alone, pays its workers so badly that many cannot afford to live with dignity; earning no more than £5 a day. The Rana Plaza factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed on April 24, killing more than 1,100 people.)

Elena N Bodnar, Raphael C Lee, and Sandra Marijan invented a bra that can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks. (The cups can be separated from each other and placed over the mouth and nose, the bra strap can be then be used to keep it on your head. It's so good, it won the inventors an Ignoble award in 2009, and you can buy one, it's called an E-Bra, which is short for emergency bra.)

Male students at Oxford University can wear skirts when taking their exams. (In the past only ceremonial clothing "specific to gender" was allowed, the outfits were known as known as subfusc, where male students were required to wear a dark suit and socks, black shoes, a white bow tie and a plain white shirt and collar under their black gowns, and female students had to wear a dark skirt or trousers, a white blouse, black stockings and shoes and a black ribbon tied in a bow at the neck. Since 2012 the regulations have been amended to remove any reference to gender, so male students are free to sit their exams in said skirts and stockings and women have the option of wearing the suits and bow ties. Guess what I sat my exams in?  Yup - jeans and a t-shirt.)

PVH, owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and German retailer Tchibo have signed up to the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement (BFBSA) which will require signatories to ensure suppliers' premises meet improved safety standards. (The drive for this follows the collapse of  the Rana Plaza, a building in Bangladesh.  Hundreds of people have been killed or injured and rescuers are still searching for survivors.   Simple Approach, a supplier to cheap fashion outlet Primark, occupied the second floor of the eight-storey building. It seems building collapses are common in Bangladesh, due to lax building regulations. 25 Nov 2000  A fire at the Sagar Chowdhury Garment Factory in Narsingdi, 35 miles from Dhaka, kills 52 people, including children. A locked gate stops them escaping. 11 Apr 2005  Sixty-four people are killed when the Spectrum factory near Dhaka collapses. The disaster is blamed on illegal construction. 25 Feb 2010  A...

One million spiders were used to create a golden spider silk cape that will be on show at London's V&A. (The designers, Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley, used Madagascar Golden Orb spiders to create the work of art. It takes the silk from 23,000 spiders to weave 25 grammes of silk, and there are 1.5kg of silk in the cape. All in all, it took eight years to complete it. The spiders were "borrowed" from the forest, and returned there after a day. I wonder if they have a union?)

A survey suggest that only 18% of male office workers in the UK wear ties. (The German boss of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Professor Martin Roth, said that only security guards bothered to wear a tie any longer. As proof of this people have noted that David Cameron chose an open-neck shirt in many of his appearances on TV, so as not to appear stuffy, and even Prince William got in on the act when he turned up at a recent charity event in a shirt and sweater rather than a suit and tie.

Do you remember that rhinestone-encrusted glove worn by pop icon Michael Jackson for his first "moonwalk" dance in 1983? Well it sold for $350,000 at an auction in New York. (The pre-sale estimate was a mere 40,000 to 60,000 dollars, but obviously someone wanted it - a lot. I just wonder what they're going to put on their other hand.)

According to a survey by CareerNet, almost three-quarters of South Korean male office workers feel uncomfortable when female colleagues show too much leg or cleavage in the workplace. ( 56 % objected to micro-miniskirts (I call them belts) and 51% objected to excessive cleavage (you don't hear that complaint much in the UK). Hipster trousers revealing underwear, "killer heels" and flashy outfits in general were also cause for complaint. Women complained about stains on the shirts and ties of their male colleagues, but I'm sure they'd complain if their male colleagues turned up in high heels and low cut blouses.)

Alexander Parkes patented celluloid in 1856. (He never saw his invention reach fruition. Probably because he described it as a "hard, horny elastic and waterproof substance" and patented it as a clothing waterproof for woven fabrics.)

According to Paul Nijhuis, the owner of the Nijhuis clog factory in the small eastern town of Beltrum, the Netherlands, around 350,000 pairs of working clogs are manufactured in the Netherlands every year. (Clogs (klompen) have been around for over 800 years. They are usually made of wood from poplar or willow trees. The Nijhuis clog factory claims to produce 90 percent of the world's "klompen".)

Around two million tonnes of clothing ends up in landfill in the UK every year. (The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says the clothing and textiles sector in the UK produces around 3.1m tonnes of carbon dioxide, 2m tonnes of waste and 70m tonnes of waste water per year. In 2007 the Environment Select Committee found that the proportion of textile waste at council tips in the UK had risen from 7 per cent to 30 per cent in five years. It's called throw away or disposable fashion, driven by companies like Primark, in fact it's called the Primark effect. There is hope though, people like Helen Storey who began the Wonderland project, and who along with Professor Tony Ryan has invented the Disappearing Dress, which disintegrates in the wash. My only worry is that it rains a lot in the UK.)

According to research published in the British Journal of Ophthalmolog, men should think twice about how tight they wear a necktie because it could increase their chances of developing glaucoma. (Seemingly a tight necktie can raise the blood pressure in the eye, which is a leading risk factor in the illness that can lead to damage to the optic nerve and loss of vision. I have a better suggestion - don't wear ties.)