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!

From our point of view at Cheap Clothes Rule, 2008 was a transitional year in fashion – there were no huge breakthrough fashions and no designers grasping the style baton. Having said that there were a few fashion winners on the high street this year. Skinny Jeans, Gilets, Retro-Printed T-Shirts, UGG boots and Leather Jackets were ubiqutous in 2008 (although not necessarily worn together!)

What did you love wearing in 2008, fill out our fun Poll!

2009 is only a couple of weeks away and the new year party season is almost upon us. Contrary to almost all of my fellow countrymen here in Scotland, I have never been the biggest fan of Hogmany – Year on year I find it almost impossible to keep all my acquaintances happy – when the big night arrives you feel like you have to acknowledge everyone of any importance at all in your life, although invariably someone always misses out. Very frustrating.

There’s also something about the forced jollility of it all that really irks (have these people never been out the house before?, sometimes we wonder) – complete strangers thinking its alright to grab you anywhere or kiss you full on without warning, massive queues in the pubs, vast entrance fees to the nightclubs, the list goes on ………

Fashion-wise however, new year is a lot more enjoyable than Christmas, mainly because the boxing day sales offer a great opportunity to grab a brand-spanking new party outfit at a bargain price.

Lets have a look at some outfit ideas for the three main types of new year party.

The House Party – These are probably the most common type of parties that you will be attending (im going to a house party this year). We would keep it simple in the house party scenario, the golden rule is never to appear over-dressed, there will always be someone in a suit – they will stand out like a sore thumb and no-one will talk to them. Go with a shirt or t-shirt, a relaxed fit pair of jeans and a pair of trainers for boogie-ing.

The Dance – This is a slightly more difficult to judge style arena. If you are going to a Ceilidh dance, where you will be on the dance floor for about 80% of the night, something light and airy would be the choice, like a long dress. If your are attending a more formal dinner dance a more slinky dress is probably the way to go, possibly with a scarf or pachmina, you will be sitting down more in these type of dances.

The Formal – Formal new year celebrations make us shudder somewhat -  however, obviously it makes things easier stylistically – black tie is pretty difficult to get wrong for men and a simple but elegant dress for women is the way to go.

We hoped you enjoyed our advice on the new year party style. Let me know what outfits you are planning to wear this year. Hope you have a great time whatever you get up to – imp going to try my best this year not to be the party pooper!

Theres no getting round it, these are sad days for the UK High Street. The demise of Woolworths has been so spectacularly quick that we can hardly believe its actually happening. Although Woolies didn’t go into the cheap clothes market quite as heavily as their competitors (one mistake to add to the list possibly?), it was still a good stand-by if you needed a pair of socks in an emergency.

Like many of us in the UK, i harbour fond memories of Woolworths, for a few glorious childhood years it was a weekend highlight to get treated to a new toy or board game. There has obviously been some disastrous managment decisions, but regardless of all that  – passing the local store on the bus this morning with its empty shelves and disconsolate looking staff was actually quite poignant.

Contrary to this rather downbeat note, is it just us or does the High Street seem busier than ever this year? During our Christmas shopping shopping trips over the last couple of weekends there is scant evidence of the credit crunch. There are queues in almost every store and people seem to be buying in bulk. Where exactly are they getting the money from?

Gilets are great for the Winter, as they are fashionable and practical at the same time. An excellent option for the layering look, gilets can be worn as the primary outer layer or underneath a jacket for particularly cold days (very common here in Scotland!). They look great worn with skin tight long-sleeve tops, jeans and big furry boots!. There are a few differing types of gilet, with outdoor, hooded, ‘puffa’ style and faux-fur gilets being the most popular on the high street. As per usual, we have scanned the web for some of the best examples of the women’s gilet:

There are few more cliched phrases in fashion than ‘…….. is the new black’. Dark Blues and Greys were the new black last winter. Examining the winter ranges of the top high street stores in 2008 however, it seems that black is most definitely back. We are not disheatrened by this turn of events – black can be utilised to great effect in any outfit. However, we would urge a note of caution-use black sparingly. The UK winter is usually dark enough, most of us need cheering up-it doesn’t do the spirits much good to see everyone looking like they’re en route to an Addams Family Convention. We at CCR would use use one item (top, trousers, jeans) of black together with a bright and vibrant counterpoint, we are pretty sure that most of you would do this anyway. Without any further ado here are some of our favourite black clothes from the winter ranges: