What can you wear to attract the boys? It's certainly not high fashion according to Dating Doyenne, Sally Ann Lasson

A friend of mine went to a party with her husband. There, they met a woman who was wearing a short, tight, black spandex dress and had a teddy bear pinned to her bottom. 'It's my bare behind,' giggled the woman inanely. My friend grimaced with embarrassment. Her husband, generally considered one of the most stylish men in London, was beguiled. Reader, he left his wife for the woman in the spandex dress with the teddy bear talking point. She got a result.

'Result wear' applies to any outfit which more or less guarantees action. It doesn't necessarily mean sex, but it usually does. Everyone's got something in their wardrobe that they put on in the full confidence that they are dressed for success. And it doesn't have to be the black leather mini skirt of legend - although that's always a good starting point. You don't want to be too subtle if you're dressing to attract a man. They're like dogs: they have a completely Pavlovian reaction to every cliche in the book.

Men don't like fashion. If you showed a straight man a photograph of a John Galliano couture original they wouldn't react at all - except to the price. What men like is clothes. Tarty clothes. They'll try and deny it but just spend an evening watching the boys watch the girls and this is what they like. In no particular order: high heels, short skirts, glimpse of bra, glimpses of bra and cleavage, tight white T-shirts, bum-hugging trousers, black knee-high boots, leather jeans, fluffy sweaters.

Don't wear all of the above at once because that would overdo it and give them the right impression. You have to choose whether you're working your top half or your bottom half. So if, for instance, you're offering cleavage and flirty-top-with-bra-views you need to combine that with a plain, long skirt or trousers. If you go for mini-skirt and boots, you wear something that doesn't scream 'wanton hussy' on the top. Apart from anything else, it isn't a good idea to wear an entire outfit that you need to spend the whole night worrying about. You could get confused and topple over.

The kids department of Hennes or the Gap is fertile ground for inexpensive result wear. Children's T-shirts, age four to five, produce exactly the right effect, as do cardigans, age nine to ten. The buttons pull tightly across your chest and a man can happily while away an hour wondering if you're going to bust out of it. Because that's another thing that gets men going - an item of clothing that suggests that something is hidden and that if they watch intently enough, it will be revealed. That's why a skirt with a slit up the side, or a dress that flashes a bit of flesh when you move in a certain way, is so effective.

I once interviewed a man who went to parties dressed as a carrot. He said that he'd originally made the outfit for a fancy dress party and that it had been so successful he decided to wear it all the time. He said that, as a carrot, he could approach anyone and they didn't mind. 'You can walk up to people at parties and hug them if you're a friendly big carrot, and they don't feel threatened at all. How can you feel threatened by a carrot?' Quite. And he claimed that he was taken seriously as a sex object. 'It's the size and shape', he speculated, which perhaps proves the old adage: 'You can either laugh women into bed or cry them into bed.'

I'm not sure that humorous clothes get a result with men, though, so I'm not advocating the same approach. Stick to the tried and tested options and don't forget the stockings. On the other hand, a strategically placed teddy bear obviously works for some.'