FIREFIGHTERS in the Balkans are wearing ex-Essex Fire and Rescue uniforms, thanks to a local charity.

They also have a 'new' fire engine, ladders and hoses.

Volunteers from Harvest for the Hungry (H4H), who deliver food aid to towns in Bulgaria every autumn, were horrified to discover firefighters in the town of Lom had no protective clothing to wear when they tackled blazes.

"In fact, two of them died recently because they had been so badly burned putting out a fire without proper protection," said Rev Roger Stark, who co-ordinates the annual H4H appeal.

The town's fire engine also dated back to the 1960s and they had virtually no equipment – their ladders were not tall enough to reach fires in blocks of flats.

Rev Roger Stark added: "We contacted Essex Fire and Rescue Service to see if there were any spare sets of clothing and equipment going begging – and H4H was

successful!"

QANTAS is considering a tweak of Parisian chic as it consults some of Australia's leading fashion gurus on uniforms to replace its present outfits, last updated in 2008 by Peter Morrissey.

The airline is believed to be consulting top Australian fashion designers at home and expats whose creations are seen on the Paris catwalks.

Qantas staff have been in the French capital during Paris Fashion Week, meeting Collette Dinnigan, Easton Pearson, Akira Isogawa and Melbourne expat Martin Grant.

Isogawa has previously designed pyjamas for the airline, while Dinnigan designed amenity kits for first class. Balarinji's John and Ros Moriarty designed the Wirriyarra textile for the existing uniform.

Qantas expects to choose a designer by the new year to come up with the replacement for the present uniform.

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AUSTRALIAN defence force uniforms would not have failed if the material was made at Wangaratta textile manufacturer Bruck, the company said yesterday.

General manager of sales and marketing Darren O'Loughlin said the fact that some of the 5000 uniforms bought from a US manufacturer had ripped around the crotch proved it would have been cheaper to source the garments in Australia.

The US company was also awarded a $4.7 million contract for the intellectual property rights to the uniform design and a $3.1 million contract to develop camouflage colours.

Mr O'Loughlin said the decision to outsource was wrong.

"Based on the money paid, we would have expected the uniforms to have been of exceptional quality," he said.

"Offshore is not always necessarily where you get the best quality and performance.

"Those garments made in Australia out of the material used in the army combat uniform would not have failed in that way."

Mr O'Loughlin said the decision could be seen as unpatriotic.

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Irked by their old uniform's heavy jackets and trousers with no pockets for scissors or walkie-talkies, a group of paramedics have spent spare time in the past two years designing their new threads.

"In the past they've been really heavy," Wellington Free Ambulance spokesman Ross Cameron said.

"If you're doing CPR for half an hour in a high-vis jacket you really start to build up some heat."

The new jade green uniforms, made by Swazi, feature lightweight Gore-Tex jackets, leg-pockets for scissors and other items, and the option of an all-in-one squad suit.

They were trialled by paramedics who headed to Christchurch following the February quake as a final test, before being rolled out during last Friday's late shift.

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Leading RTO and exhibition join forces to launch the Professional Clothing Awards and reward exceptional workwear, corporate clothing and PPE from around the world.

Now in its 5th year, the Workwear and Corporate Clothing Show has raised the bar once more by introducing the Professional Clothing Awards to its 2012 line-up.

This exciting new event will combine the show's prestigious Business Manager Awards with new supplier awards – as well as the SATRA PPE Innovation Awards to create an ambitious international event.

The categories will take in the whole working garment industry – from products, components and materials to full uniforms and processes – and entries will be judged on their practical benefits to the user, the supply chain and the environment.

The Business Manager Awards in 2009 & 2010 rewarded buyer-supplier partnerships for their exceptional dedication and innovation displayed in the development of top-to-toe uniforms for corporate clothing, workwear and PPE.

The event was a huge success for two years' running and got its organisers at the Workwear and Corporate Clothing Show thinking about the rest of the industry.

"As well as rewarding the buyers and suppliers that produce bespoke uniforms within predominately managed contracts, we wanted to include the many other businesses that make up the supply chain for these uniforms, and whose products make a difference to the daily lives of workers," Workwear and Corporate Clothing Show managing director Yvette Ashby said.

"This is how the seed for the Professional Clothing Awards was planted. Whether they manufacture fibres and fabrics, supply stock garments or distribute footwear, all businesses in the workwear, corporate clothing and PPE industry will now have the chance to be recognised for their important work."

A number of EgyptAir flight attendants on Thursday organized a protest outside the Egyptian state TV headquarters, known as the Maspiro building, in Cairo to demand the right to wear the hijab (veil) at work.

In a statement, the flight attendants said that company officials were ignoring their demands despite ongoing protests since July.

Meanwhile, a committee set up by the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry failed to end the dispute following negotiations with the flight attendants in August. The protestors blamed EgyptAir officials for the failure.

In August, Head of EgyptAir's Holding Company Hussein Masoud said that changing the company's uniforms would take time and that "it was not easy," as different factors had to be considered in order to design a uniform suitable for the hijab.

Fabric dyeing is one of the most environmentally harmful processes in textile manufacturing. Effluent from dyes are often released into lakes and rivers. Without proper treatment this runoff wreaks havoc on local ecosystems. These are some of the reasons why Dutch company DyeCoo has come up with a new technology of fabric dyeing using carbon dioxide.

DyeCoo's waterless innovation, which the company has branded DryDye, took 11 years to develop. Its parent company, FeyeCon, previously engineered a similar process for applications in the industrial sector for example, chemical extraction in pharmaceutical production.

The technique uses supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2). When carbon dioxide is held above its critical temperature and critical pressure, it is takes on properties of a fluid. It commonly is used as a solvent because of its low toxicity and environmental impact. When the gas is heated up to 31 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit) and pressurized to 74 bar, it takes on the characteristics of both a liquid and a gas, allowing for the dissolution of compounds such as dyes.

For DyeCoo's purposes scCO2 is heated to 120 degrees Celsius (248 degrees Fahrenheit) and pressurized to 250 bar. This makes it behave as both a solvent and solute. This CO2 then penetrates textile fibers and disperses the preloaded dyes without extra chemical agents.

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TUCKED away in an Airport West industrial estate is a curious museum dedicated to the once great domestic airline, TAA.

Here you'll find the menu from the first TAA flight from Laverton to Sydney on September 9, 1946 - 21 passengers ate scrambled eggs, tea and scones.

Newspaper articles tell how in 1960 a crazed gunman hijacked a TAA plane between Sydney and Brisbane and was subdued by two pilots and a hostess.

There's a painting of Nola Rose, whose face adorned TAA ads and tickets for 30 years after a TAA publicist approached her on Bondi Beach in 1952.

But just as fascinating are the museum volunteers - just 29 of them, who lovingly keep the proud TAA legacy aloft on the smell of an oily rag. Mostly former TAA employees, they curate nearly 200,000 items on one sprawling floor of a Qantas training centre. But it nearly didn't happen.

In 1993, historical gems - signs, crockery, letters, uniforms - were being tossed out as Qantas merged with Australian Airlines, which until 1986 had been called TAA or Trans-Australia Airlines.

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Up on the Mountain, Joe Camillo is rushing to the back to check on staff working on an order for a new customer, a big-time Canadian contractor who needs thousands of pieces of special fire retardant clothing.

Down the road in Stoney Creek, the workshop at Kushies is a whir of activity with sewers, sorters and packers working through stacks of bright soft baby fabrics to keep inventory levels up. Then there's the guy setting up for a trade show in the United States next month.

On Barton Street, Benny Bombardieri is just coming off vacation and getting geared up for the back-to-school season and kids shopping for uniforms.

Hamilton's apparel industry, almost two centuries old, was at one time a major player in the city's economy with thousands employed in clothing factories and sewing mills. Those days are long gone, but a local industry survives, with a few small players succeeding in specialized niches.

"The media called it a sunset industry," said Jean Rivard, executive director of the Apparel Human Resources Council, a federally funded industry group.

FOR the first time British Airways' has displayed its vast collection of cabin crew uniforms at a special catwalk show at London's Southbank Centre.

The collection stretches from the present day all the way back to the 1930s and includes some of the 450 different uniforms cabin crew have worn through the airline's history.

The 'A Cut Above' show was held on Sunday as part of the Vintage Festival, a celebration of music, fashion, film, art, design and cultural lineages from the 1920s to the 1980s.

Festival organiser Wayne Hemingway said: "Through the decades, British Airways uniforms have always invoked the glamour and style of flying.

"Seeing them for the first time altogether on a catwalk at the Vintage at Southbank Centre was an opportunity not to be missed."

The uniforms on display included style icons such as the disposable paper dress worn by BOAC stewardesses on routes between New York and the Caribbean during the swinging 60s.

The dresses were all a standard long length so the stewardesses had to cut their dress to the appropriate length - remembering that the hemline had to be no more than 7.5cms above the knee.

Retired crew member Pat Pearce, who wore the uniform, said: "Once I was crouched on the floor, cutting mine to suit me.

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