Express Yourself More Creatively Today With These 5 Clothing Idioms

First off, I want to wish you and your family a...

🏮 Happy Lunar New Year! 🏮

Having lived in Shanghai and Chongqing before, I'm happy that I know something of the excitement of the season.

May 2021 bring you and your family happiness, health and prosperity.

Second, I want to ask you:

As a fashion professional, are you comfortable expressing yourself in a descriptive and lively way to your colleagues and clients in English?

Not quite yet? Never fear, because today we are taking a closer looks at phrases to do with...

... clothes!

(You guessed it.)

Here are 5 fun idioms to spice up your communication as a fashion professional, with phrases based on clothing itself. We will look at the meaning of each of these apparel-based phrases and see some examples of how you can use then when talking with your English-speaking co-workers today.

1. ❤️ to wear your heart on your sleeve
2. 💵 to tighten your belt
3. 💪🏻 to roll up your sleeves
4. ‼️ to be bursting at the seams
5. 🎨 to be dyed-in-the-wool

Let's roll up our sleeves and get going! 👊🏻

Number 1 — ❤️ to wear your heart on your sleeve

Meaning: you openly show your feelings or emotions.

This idiom means that your true opinions, thoughts and feelings are obvious to everyone, not kept bottled up inside you.

Examples:

❤️ If you hurt her feelings—even a little—she will let you know. She's definitely a heart-on-her-sleeve kind of girl.

❤️ I find it difficult to know how he is feeling about the recent news. He’s a very private man, and doesn’t exactly wear his heart on his sleeve.

❤️ My friend's social media posts about his personal life and relationships are a little too much for me... should he really be wearing his heart on his sleeve online like that?

Number 2 — 💵 to tighten your belt

Meaning: to spend less than before, in order to save money.

When the Great Depression hit America in the 1930s, people who had a lot to eat they were said to "have a good meal under their belt". But if you could not afford to buy food, you would go hungry.

Today, cutting your spending or 'tightening your belt' means managing to live without life's little luxuries. Sacrifices always have to be made when you think twice about spending money. This idiom means you don’t buy things you are tempted to buy, or you willingly restrict your budget.

Examples:

💵 As a young brand, we can’t increase the buying budget this year. In fact, we’re tightening our belts across the whole company these days.

💵 Customers are looking for cheaper down-market alternatives for our products. It seems belts are tightening, at least for luxury spending.

💵 You: "Wow, nice dress shoes, David! They are from Hermès, right?" — David: "Nah, they were $12 from AliExpress; I’m trying to tighten my belt these days."

No. 3 — 💪🏻 to roll up your sleeves (also: to roll your sleeves up)

Meaning: to get ready for action, like hard work.

Use this phrase when it's time to get ready for doing difficult or intense work.

Examples:

💪🏻 Being able to delegate tasks to his team is a vital skill for any leader to have. However, a leader must never forget how to roll up his sleeves and help his team with the work on the ground.

💪🏻 Now that we are clear on our goal, our design team have their sleeves rolled up ready to meet next week’s deadline.

💪🏻 At 8:30 in the morning talking to yourself: "Okay, the coffee is ready—the ABBA playlist is on—and the sleeves are up. Time to grind!

No. 4 — ‼️ to be bursting at the seams

Meaning: to be over-filled, to be very full or crowded (too many things or people inside).

The two images on the left are of seams, where two pieces of something (e.g. fabric) are sewn together.

This idiom means to have too much inside something, so that it is ripping or exploding. The container doesn't have to have literal seams as we will see in the examples:

‼️ When the winterwear collection dropped, ZARA stores across the country were bursting at the seams with eager customers.

‼️ The city’s hotels were bursting at the seams during New York's fashion week.

‼️ If we bought every cute thing we saw, our closets would be bursting at the seams.

No. 5 — 🎨🐑 to be dyed-in-the-wool

Meaning: unchanging in a particular belief or opinion; having strong, unchanging opinions.

Dye? 😱

Relax—nobody died.

This dye (pronounced like die) is the pigment we add to textiles and fabrics to change their color. Use dyed-in-the-wool to describe someone's firm beliefs or their strong commitment to a particular cause, usually a political, cultural, or religious one. It's like your belief is stained or dyed into your brain.

🎨 As a dyed-in-the wool minimalist, he hates too many useless things cluttering up his studio.

🎨 As dyed-in-the-wool Benetton fanatics, they can’t wait for the new kidswear range to be released.

🎨 She has Gucci bags, Gucci earrings, Gucci iPhone cases... In her devotion to all things Gucci, she really is dyed in the wool.

Want to test your new knowledge? Look at the 5 images below (without checking the article again) and take a guess at which idiom is being illustrated. (Leave new sentences in the comments too).

I hope you find these clothing-related idioms useful and fun. Try to sneak them into a conversation with an English-speaking colleague or client today.

If you want to learn more about how to express yourself confidently and clearly as a fashion professional, send me a message today.