Don't Wear Socks with Sandals Trivia Quiz

Answer: 13

Ms Rutledge-Johns says that if one can count more than 13 visible pieces of clothing and accessories, one is seriously over-dressed. The well-dressed woman usually aims for 10-11.

Barbara Rutledge-Johns is the former wife of actor Sam Waterston, and mother of actor James Waterston. Her book of fashion tips was called 'Pull Yourself Together' and it was published in 1967 by Simon and Schuster. Although the book has been around for such a long time, the advice contained in its pages is still practical and applicable.

Answer: A good tailor

Fans of the TLC program 'What Not to Wear' will know that Clinton Kelly and Stacy London, who co-host the show, maintain that a woman can forget diamonds and advice given by her best friend and mother, and should focus instead on finding a good tailor or seamstress.

The Gospel of 'What Not to Wear', as preached by London and Kelly, is that the secret to dressing well is simplicity, avoiding fashion fads, and wearing clothes that fit properly, regardless of body shape.

Answer: Susannah Constantine and Trinny Woodall

British fashion gurus Susannah Constantine and Trinny Woodall created 'What Not to Wear' for BBC TV, with the first episode airing on November 29, 2001. The show takes ordinary women with impaired fashion sense and helps them to put together a signature style that suits their body shape and their lifestyle. Constantine and Woodall co-hosted the show for five seasons before moving on to other things and handing over the hosting chores to Lisa Butcher and Mica Paris. The show has been shown around the world.

TLC launched the US version in 2003, with Stacy London and Wayne Scot Lukas as co-hosts. Lukas did not charm viewers and was replaced after the first season with the urbane Clinton Kelly, a former editor with 'Marie Claire' and 'Mademoiselle' and most recently executive editor of 'Daily News Record', a weekly publication devoted to men's fashion. Ms London began her fashion career at 'Vogue' and was a senior fashion editor for 'Mademoiselle', before being chosen as host of 'What Not to Wear'.

Trivia note: Stacy's streak of white hair has been there since she was eleven years old. Her contract with Pantene, for whom she appears in television commercials, includes a clause that says that she keeps her trademark streak!

Answer: 1892

Arthur Baldwin Turnure founded Vogue in 1892. On his death in 1909, the magazine was taken over by Conde Nast Publications and it has grown to become the most influential fashion magazine in the world. It is now published in 24 countries around the world.

Answer: Charles Worth

Believe it or not the progenitor of Parisian haute couture was an Englishman named Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895). Worth served as an apprentice to two London textile merchants, learning about fabrics. When he was 20 he headed for Paris and joined the firm of Gagelin, which dealt in fabrics and ready-made clothing.

Worth was soon Gagelin's top salesman and convinced his employers that they should establish an exclusive dressmaking department, featuring his designs, which would cater to the Parisian female elite. Worth's designs won prizes in the Great Exhibition in England in 1851, and in 1858 he left Gagelin to open his own fashion atelier, The House of Worth.

One of his most devoted customers was the wife of Napoleon III, Empress Eugenie, who was the foremost fashionista of her day. It wasn't long before other wealthy women from France, England, other European countries and the United States flocked to Worth and the tradition of Haute Couture was born in Paris.

The House of Worth continued to hold a place of prominence on the European fashion scene until Charles Worth's great-grandson Jean-Charles Worth retired at the age of 71 in 1952.

Answer: The Full Nanaimo

I'm sure there are other terms in use around the world to describe the propensity of local elderly gents to wear pastels on boardwalks and beaches.

The Full Nanaimo usually comprises a pastel-coloured shirt, a white belt, pastel-coloured trousers (to match or contrast with the shirt), and white shoes. If knee-length shorts are worn instead of full-length trousers, the white shoes are replaced by the dreaded socks-and-sandals combo. A trilby-style straw hat (often with a pastel-coloured hatband) and sunglasses complete this bizarre fashion statement.

Answer: A head scarf

The well-dressed woman heading out for an evening of dining and dancing in the late 1800s/early 1900s wore a fascinator, a filmy scarf of lace or silk. It not only served to protect her elaborate hairstyle but also, no doubt, gave her an air of provocative allure.

Nowadays, the term fascinator applies to those little creations of feathers and flowers that adorn the heads of brides and fashionistas like Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie of York.

Answer: paper dress

Thong underwear didn't come into vogue until the late 1980s/early 1990s, while mood rings and platform-soled boots were products of the disco-era of the 1970s.

The paper dress was invented in 1966 by the Scott Paper Company in the US as a marketing tool, and, much to SPC's surprise, became the fashion sensation of the year. Other companies followed the trend and, in addition to paper dresses as daytime wear, one could buy paper evening dresses and paper wedding dresses! Andy Warhol even designed a paper dress featuring his famous Campbell's soup cans print. Soon there were paper slippers, paper pant suits, and waterproofed paper raincoats and bikinis, all with price tags of $20.00 or less!

Fashion columnists waxed enthusiastic about paper clothing, suggesting that one could travel without luggage, buying paper clothing at one's destination instead.

However, the fad ended very quickly. Efforts to create a paper-based fabric that wouldn't tear easily or catch fire proved impossible, and it wasn't long before the whole paper dress phenomenon was merely another fashion history footnote.

Answer: A leisure suit

The Nehru jacket was popularized by the Beatles in the 1960s, and pleated front pants and scrubs as streetwear didn't emerge onto the fashion scene until the 1980s. No, the great fashion statement for men in the 1970s was the leisure suit.

Leisure suits consisted of pants (often flared) and matching unstructured, shirt-style jackets, and more often than not they were made of polyester double knit (surely one of the most loathsome fabrics ever created!) or denim. They were usually worn with shirts unbuttoned almost to the waist and several pounds of gold chains!

Leisure suits owed their popularity partly to the rebellion against formality in clothing prevalent in the late 1960s and the 1970s, and partly to the disco culture. However, the business world frowned on leisure suits as being wholly inappropriate as business dress, and top-of-the-line restaurants added leisure suits to the list of undesirable wear for their establishments.

Eventually, leisure suits became fodder for comedians' routines and by 1978 retailers were almost reduced to paying their customers to take their leisure suit stocks off their hands.

Some fashion trends deserve to die, and none more so than the leisure suit.

Answer: blue jeans

Is there anybody out there who does not own - or has never owned - a pair of jeans? Levi Strauss, a Bavarian-born New York textile wholesaler, had the bright idea of moving west to sell trousers made of the sturdy denim to miners during the California Goldrush of the mid-nineteenth century, and the first US-originated fashion was born.

Actually, the first people to wear a rudimentary form of blue jeans were Genoese sailors in Italy back in the 1500s (some etymologists maintain that the word 'jean', the original name of the hardwearing wool/cotton blend, derives from the fabric's city of origin, Genoa). Jean was being milled in Lancashire, England in the 16th century and was then a blend of cotton and wool. It was so hardwearing that footwear was made from jean until the middle of the 19th century.

In the 18th century mills dispensed with wool when weaving the fabric and from then on both jean and denim were woven solely from cotton. The name denim, which eventually became the generic name of the fabric, derives from the city of Nimes in France, a textile centre in France. Serge de Nimes (twill of Nimes) was produced there as early as the late 16th century. Denim was even sturdier than jean. American mills started producing denim and jean in the 19th century. What's the difference between the two weaves? Denim is woven with blue thread as the warp and blue thread as the weft, while jean uses same-coloured thread for both warp and weft.

Until the 1950s, Levi's was the predominant brand of jeans, which were primarily worn by cowboys, workmen and teenagers. However, with the advent of the fashion-conscious 1960s, name designers got into the jeans act, the term 'designer jeans' was coined, and everyone was wearing them - from teens to trendy grandparents. Calvin Klein was one of the first top designers to market a line of blue jeans.

During the Cold War blue jeans were a premium item on a flourishing blackmarket and they sold for astronomical prices behind the Iron Curtain.