Our rules on womens accessories

The summer is in full rain-shower based swing here in the UK and fashionistas everywhere are tuning their seasonal outfits to perfection. Of course, most outfits feel incomplete without a range of top accessories to top them off. Here at Cheap Clothes Rule, we have a few guidelines when it comes to accessories, we thought that we would share them here. Feel free to laugh at them or mock us via comments.

BAGS

Bags are basically one of the best things that you can buy. Period. They are basically capsules that contain your life. With that in mind, we would always choose any bags that we would buy with great care. Essentially, we have a bag for every eventuality:

• a clutch bag for the nights out when you need to travel light
• a holdall for carrying everything you need to survive a whole day
• a handbag for those occasions where elegance is called for

Also, what many people don’t take into consideration is their body type – this matters for bags as well!

Cool Clutch Bag from Peacocks

BELTS

Belts are great as they are versatile and can be used in a manner which will transform an entire outfit. To be perfectly honest we never have more than about five or six belts at a time, we tend to throw them out when they become too stretched or worn, they do actually lose their shape! Our current collection includes an elastic, hipster, skinny, black leather and glitter belt. Each of these can be used to form a number of looks.

Buckle belt from Warehouse

HATS

Dear oh dear people, please be careful with hats! Some of the biggest fashion don’ts that we have ever seen have mostly involved some poorly judged headwear. Conversely, if done right a hat can be a cool and sexy complement to an outfit. You can get away with more in the summer though, think simple and elegant.

Simple and cool straw hat from Brixton

TIGHTS

Again, we urge caution with tights – has anyone noticed the sheer volume of bight red tights on the streets these days! We would keep it simple, muted colours and patterns are our preferences.

Cette Tights - Nice

JEWELLERY

In contrast to nearly every other item on the list, we love bright and bold Jewellery! It can really add a great finish to any outfit.

Bright and brassy sherbert necklace

Thats our feelings on accessories. They are great fun and you can get some great stuff for not alot of moolah.

You can get some more great advice on accessories from these guys, also here and this bunch too.

If anyone out there has some recomendations that we should see then leave us a comment – we want your feedback!

In the meantime, what’s your top accessory!………

Guys, forget about elaborate layers, fancy fabrics and meticulously planning your look for the summer ahead – you simply cannot go wrong with a good T-Shirt.

Here’s our top 5 T-Shirts of summer 2009……………..

Budget Classic!

Peacocks Cheap Menswear – Black Beatles T-Shirt

The Beatles are back (again) this summer, mainly due to the launch of The Beatles Rock Band Video Game. This White Logo T-Shirt has been around for years but our friends at Peacocks have this great version for a tenner.

The Beatles T over at Peacocks Menswear

Retro fun from 8 Ball

It’s fathers day on Sunday, and it’s not too  late to visit 8ball.co.uk and grab some great shirts for your old boy. This Dad’ll fix it T-Shirt is our best bet.

8ball.co.uk - dad'll fix it t-shirt

The Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt on Amazon

Instantly prove that your down with internet humour with this now notorious Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt from Amazon. Read the reviews, hilarious stuff.

Amazon's legendary Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt

Classic Mid Range Value

You can’t go wrong with a good, old fashioned solid Polo Shirt – they can be worn with virtually every type of bottoms in any situation. A classic Fred Perry should see you right – although personally we’d keep it pretty simple, avoiding big stripes and logos.

Classic Fred Perry Polo

Im sorry, how much!!!??

Billionaire Boys Club is probably one of the most sought after labels on earth right now. Set up by the impossibly cool combo of Pharell Willams from NERD and Bathing Ape founder Nigo, BBC have a superb range of streetwear, at a price! For example, this T-Shirt will set you back £70, but it is pretty awesome. Money well spent.

Billionaire Boys Club T-Shirt - Costly but Cool

There we go, five of our mens t-shirt selections for summer 2009! Any of your suggestions are welcomed – cheers!!

With June approaching fast, there are probably several hundred websites and blogs with this title vying for your intention on the internet. The reason being, that the writer has read that list articles are a popular, easily scannable type of post which due to the nature of peoples attention span on the web is more likely to get featured in Digg or Reddit and the like – which is fair enough.

However, here are at CCR we are only interersterd in the clothes and if anyone reads our posts its a great bonus (and a big thanks to all that do!).

We proclaim no qualifications or real expertise – just a deep enthusiasm for fashion and a nose for what we feel people are going to be into this summer. We have nothing too shocking or revolutionary to say here, trends are very difficult to predict and sometimes can emerge from nowhere. Many of the Summer 2009 fashion trends were predicted by the major magazines and blogs in February/March – they have their reasons but its only now as we come closer to the actual summer that trends begin to emerge. What they still don’t understand fully is that the main players in trend setting is YOU. The real power to influence lies with YOU – YOU define summer fashion, YOUR choices influence someone, who tells their friends and the effect ripples around the streets.

Anyway, slight rant over – let’s have a look at some clothes! Five fashion trends of Summer 2009:

1 – Denim – Will jeans ever go out of fashion? A perrenial winner, summer 2009 is no different. As well as classic cropped, skinnys and boyfriend jeans, weve seen some pretty cool Denim Skirt and dresses combinations. Peacocks as always have a great range of Denim shorts and  skirts, illustrating that you rarely have to break to bank for this look.

Denim Skirts from Peacocks - cool but cheap, great!

2 – The single shouldered dress and top – wow, tops and dresses with this look can be so sleek and sexy if done right – we’re so glad to see this style blasting back onto the high street. We would have one formal (like the Jane Norman top below) and one informal one-shouldered top, just to cover every occassion!

One shoulder class from Jane Norman

3 – Trousers – there is alot of trouser action on the streets already this year. Jumpsuits, harem, high-waisted and hugely bright colours are what weve come across so far. Fashion chicks have some great examples.

Harem Trousers - big, baggy and back!

4 – Transparency – light and airy transparent tops are definitely a big mover in summer 2009 – a great, versatile style that can look fantastic as a component of a layered ensemble – just be careful with transparent-only layers!

Great chiffon at Urban Outfitters

5 – High heels – the coolest shoes of the summer – literally. We would chuck our cheap clothes sensibiblities out of the window and invest in a pair of top class heels. Some great advice here on making heels comfortable.

High heels - the skys the limit

What are you going to wear this summer? – let us know your thoughts on whats going to be big in Summer 2009!

There is never a shortage of bizarre and beautiful happenings in the world of fashion.

We thought that it would be fun to compile some of our favourite stories of the last few months.

Chinese fashion designer Jiang Zhou uses UFO sightings as fashion inspiration – There are some extremely quirky fashions displayed at almost every catwalk show, but this has to be one of the most bizarre. These clothes wouldn’t look out of place in Mos Eisley Cantina.

Paris Fashion Week 2009 Epilogue – after slating catwalks in the previous paragraoh, we have to rain our tails in a little. Some of the designs from Paris 2009 looked stunning.

Victoria Beckham vows never to sing again YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS – NO! Please dont do it Becks, we love you! – Great little story from Blackbook, if only for their astute analysis of Mrs Beckham, ‘the most self actualized member of the celebrity class’.

Bruno the Movie is on the way! – Yes Sasha Baron Cohen (Ali G, Borat creator) is about to unleash his gay Austrian Fashion Reporter on the movie world soon – there are already Bruno sites popping up all over the web apparently. Should be hilarious, we’ll have more on Bruno soon.

Japanese Robot Fashion Model - are words really necessary here?

Fashion Tips on Denim – Great post from ChicStories on Denims styles, black skinny jeans still seem to be leading the way for us.

Ok, thats just a few of our best stories from recent times – what fashion stories have you came across recently?, let us know……….

We are sure that Holly Willoughby is a really nice person. Its hard not to appreciate her gentle and unthreatening presenting style on mainstream UK TV shows Dancing on Ice and The Xtra Factor. A measure of her success is that her most controversial moment came when she once wore a slightly revealing dress. Good luck to her – here’s Holly in action:

But surely her recently launched line of Maternity Clothing is one of the most unnecessary celebrity fashion lines in history.

Sorry Holly, maybe i am doubting your capacity to organise your life, but i just can’t see how you managed to fit the time to design and develop a range of maternity clothing into your busy schedule.

We realise that we have banged on about this topic before, but this has once again tipped us close to the edge. Why is it these days that, not content with appearing on our TV screens, newspaper column inches and magazine racks at every avaliable opportunity, celebs (or their management teams and desperate retailers more likely) feel the need to impose their fashion sensibilities upon us?.

The message to all these parties should be clear – please stop doing this! – We are perfectly capable of locating and deciding for ourselves what we want to wear. We are not brain dead drones who will instantly want to purchase a line of clothing just because a celebrity has stuck their signature on the label. Please stop paying these unqualified celebrities fortunes (probably) and use the budget to develop innovative and interesting clothing ranges.

Here’s some non-celebrity maternity fashion that rocks – in our opinion obviously!

Peacocks maternity clothes are pretty great – fun designs, stylish, practical and no celebs in site – exactly what we want from maternity clothing, their maternity jeans in particular are great!.

Floral Finish Maternity Top - Elegant

A bit more high-end than we would usually recommend, but some of 9 London’s maternity wear is stunningly designed.

Pretty Pregnant have an appealing mid-range priced line of maternity clothes.

Formes have been a major player for a number of years – like most things French, they have style in abundance.

Anyway, that’s just a few suggestions of ours – we hope you agree with some of them. Don’t listen to the celebritites!

Who hasn’t heard of Twitter?

At the last count the only person that hadn’t actually heard of Twitter was a goat herder from a tribe in the furthest, most remote reaches of the Himalayan Mountain range. The only reason he had remained ignorant of the micro-blogging phenomenon was that his local tribe hadn’t been upgraded to a sufficient level of broadband connection (making updating slow and inefficient), and the mobile wireless network didn’t yet quite reach yet either, making it impossible to post from his Blackberry. He is hoping to begin tweeting next month.

No, in all seriousness – Twitter is becoming an essential source of information for anyone interested in fashion and culture in general. Here’s a list of some notable Twitter users – we have also finally managed to take the time set up our own feed – obviously, it is in it’s infancy but we hope to update it on a regular basis. If any of our readers have their own Twitters, please be sure to follow us.

The long awaited Cheap Clothes Rule Twitter is here! – http://twitter.com/CheapRules. Read on for some further Twitter fun…..

Unless you’ve been on an expedition to the moon over the last couple of weeks, you can’t have failed to notice that quirky London lass Lily Allen has a new album out this week, ‘It’s Not Me It’s You’ – having only heard the single ‘The Fear‘ it seems like more of the same, Cockney-accented melodic pop – which isn’t necesarily a bad thing.

New album from London Lily

Not only is wee Lily conquering the world of music, her unique fashion sensibility seems to be the primary influence on many of the ranges of some of the top high street stores this spring. Let’s have a look at some Lily-isms………..

Vitually all of the Ladies Dresses at Peacocks are Lily-Style…..the pink ruffle bow is pretty similar to the one on the album cover.