Gloves.

Gloves have been worn from ancient times as protection and ornamentation. In ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome gloves were worn by both sexes for protection at work. Gloves were also necessary for hunting and for military use. With the Renaissance, the nobility in Venice and Genoa were first seen wearing such items as perfumed gloves made of fine coloured leathers.

The 19th century was very much an age when gloves had to be worn by gentlemen and ladies indoors and out. It used to be that a lady couldn't leave the house without her gloves. For men, gloves were short, and normally coloured for day wear and white in the evenings. For ladies, the length depended upon the costume: during the day, with long-sleeved gowns, gloves were wrist-length, but with the short sleeves of evening dresses gloves reached to the elbow or above. Black silk or net mittens were also worn indoors in the day-time. Until the nineteenth century most glove styles were of the pull-on type with no fastening, but after 1800 the short, wrist-length gloves were generally buttoned or fastened by cords.

Many customs and superstitions have grown up over the ages with regard to gloves. For example, it has been customary to give a pair of gloves as a present, they have been used as a pledge or thrown down as a challenge.

BELTS.

A belt can make or break an outfit. A belt has the same impact as a piece of jewellery and will last for years if you choose classic, neutral colours.

Every wardrobe needs a minimum of two belts. One that is approximately 2 cm wide and another 4 cm wide. Leather belts are the most practical and will last longer than those made from fabric. However, the focal point of every belt is the buckle. If you wear a lot of gold or silver, choose your metal buckle accordingly. Simple buckles work best. Avoid ornate designs and designer logos and initials. They date very quickly. Some belts, particularly heavy ones, are made with detachable buckles, so you can swap your buckle to suit your outfit.

Choose the colour of your belt to match your shoes if you want to draw attention to your waist and look coordinated. It is always a good idea to try on the belt you wish to buy with the garment you'll be wearing it with. Size is important, too. A belt that is the right size should fasten in the middle hole. You should have a belt wardrobe, preferably in neutral colours that don't look too heavy, so that you can wear them in summer or winter, with lightweight or heavier fabrics. A choice of four to six belts in your wardrobe will probably be sufficient.

BOOTS.

Boots have been worn by men from earliest times, at first made in primitive manner with fur and hides roughly sewn or threaded together with thongs. Through all ages, in most parts of the world, they have been an important item of the wardrobe for travelling, horse-riding and doing all kinds of outdoor work; while in colder climates they have proven essential for protection and warmth. Equally, even in hot areas of the world, boots have been essential footwear where the terrain was inhospitable, as in desert or mountain country.

Apart from this utilitarian purpose, boots have, in certain ages, been fashionable footwear equal to, or paramount over, shoes or sandals. In the West, in Britain and Europe, this was especially so in the first half of the seventeenth century, the later eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth, though, in the latter case, the boots were only partly visible for much of the time as they were worn under the trousers. In all these instances, boots were masculine wear but, in the nineteenth century, ladies wore boots also, design varying from ankle-boots in the early years to high-buttoned footwear at the end of the century.

SHOES.

The purpose of shoes is to protect the sole and the upper part of the foot from extremes of the heat and cold, from wet and dirt, from rough ground and from dangers such as animal and insect bites. The simplest means of doing this was either to fix an additional layer or sole under the foot (in the form of a sandal) or to close the foot in a bag of material (as a kind of moccasin). For climatic reasons, primitive sandals were generally developed in hot countries and the moccasin in colder, northern regions. At some point these two forms of footwear were combined and modified to produce what can be properly called a shoe: that is, a closed covering for the upper part of the foot attached to a separate sole.

The word "shoe" can be used as a general term for footwear but a distinction can be made between the shoe and the boot. The boot covers a part of the leg as well as the foot, while the shoe covers only the foot. At some periods overshoes (in the form of pattens or galoshes) have also been worn to protect both the feet and shoes from damp and dirt.

JEANS

Jean is a strong twilled cotton material: a type of fustian (бумазея, диагональ). The many different spellings include Janua, the medieval Latin word for Genoa, the Italian city where the material was made in the Middle Ages. It has been used widely since the 16^th century for working clothes due to its hard-wearing quality. The fabric is commonly blue and is best known in the second half of the 20^th century for blue jeans, which are named after it. The word jeans has been used since the early 19^th century for trousers made from jean.

There is another version concerning the name of fabric jeans are usually made of: “jeans are made out of denim, a fabric probably named after the Frenchman Serge de Nimes, who made the material during the 17^th century”. In those days pants made out of denim were known as “jean” after the sailors of Genoa, Italy, who wore them. Today jeans are worn by people around the world. The hype surrounding jeans started when they become linked with the images of Hollywood movie stars and Western pop signers. Jeans are all more or less like but for many people the brand name is the important thing. Few people want to be seen in a brandless pair: some choose Levi’s, others prefer Calvin Klein or some other designer brand of jeans.

But do you know that there are more similarities between all these different pairs of jeans than you may think? Do you know how jeans are now made? And where? And by whom? Within the global garment industry, it is common to find female workers working long hours for low pay. Many factories don’t even pay the minimum wage. Many people who stitch the jeans we wear are forced to work overtime, sometimes working weeks without even a day off in the bad working conditions. Child labour and unhealthy conditions (bad air, bad water, etc.) are problems that are regularly revealed by inspectors.

Though some jeans are still stitched in Europe, most production has moved to countries where wages are lower and conditions more favourable for the big companies. The jeans in your closet might be produced in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Poland, Romania or France. Often the factories are not owned by the jeans companies; they only place orders there. But workers aren’t just accepting this situation. There are many examples around the world of workers in the garment industry organizing to demand their rights. And the people who wear jeans also refuse to buy clothes that were made by child labour, or by people paid almost nothing or forced to work seven days a week. It is known that the actual expense for workers’ wages is only a very small part of the price one pays for a pair of jeans – it’s usually never higher than 5%.