Man: And where do you think your going in that short skirt?
Woman: Out! Why?
Man: You’re not going anywhere dressed like that. Go and put that nice blue dress on that you’re mother bought you.
Woman: Dad, I’m seventeen, this is the latest fashion, everyone is wearing mini skirts again. Mum help me, dad’s treating me like a little girl again.

Woman: Sometimes we use 2 or 3 adjectives together to describe something. For example, it’s a big red sports car, or it’s a long black vintage dress. If we do so, then we must follow a fixed order. The “order of adjectives” is very long, but as we don’t often use all the types of adjectives to describe one thing, here, we’ll look at some of the most frequently used ones. For example, I’ve bought a long, new, turquoise, Italian, silk dress.
The order of adjectives used here, is
SIZE + AGE+COLOUR+ORIGIN+MATERIAL+ the noun.
Listen to these examples:

Man: I bought a plain white cotton T-shirt.
Man: I need a new black linen suit.
Man: I love collecting old British cars.
Man: I’m going to buy my wife some new French perfume.
Woman: The word order of adjectives of quality changes though if we use verbs such as “be”, “become”, “get” & “seem”. If we use one of these verbs then the structure is verb + adjective. For example, “she is happy,” “he is becoming famous,” “he always gets lucky,” and “she seems to be a nice girl.”
Listen to this short conversation:

Man: What do you think? Shall we hire her?
Woman: Well she seems to be a nice girl and she is very professional.
Man: Well perhaps we should call her, before someone else gets lucky and snaps her up. Give her a ring and invite her to come in this week.

Woman: As I mentioned earlier adjectives are used to describe nouns, i.e. she’s a beautiful woman, and we usually use “adverbs” to describe verbs, or to say how an action is done, (the structure is verb + adverb) i.e. she dresses beautifully. But don’t get confused when you use the verbs of the senses, i.e. feel, look, smell, sound and taste, to describe the subject of the verb, as adjectives can also come after these verbs. For example, “That suit looks fantastic.” In this example the structure is verb + adjective as we are describing the dress. But, “he looked carefully around the room. ”In this example it is verb + adverb, as we are talking about how somebody does an action.
Now listen to this example:

Man: Why are you looking at me so suspiciously?
Woman: Because you look strange. Where have you been?
Man: I felt ill, so I went to the doctors and there was a long queue.
Woman: Mmm. I smell a rat.

Woman: “Clothes are the decorations of our personalities that we use to cover our body to face the world.” Or so it is said, what kind of clothes do you like?
Now let’s listen to some adjectives and their different word orders in the following conversation between 2 people sorting out their wardrobes and storage boxes because they are moving house.

Woman: I can’t believe how many boxes of unused clothes we’ve got.
Man: Well, most of them are yours my dear, you never throw anything out.
Woman: That’s not fair. Every year I take the clothes I know I don’t need or I’m never going to wear again to charity shops. I only keep a few classical ones, and those with special memories.
Man: I can see that, by your labelling on the boxes, spring 1976, winter 1984, summer 1999. You are going to have to throw some away, our new house is a lot smaller, and we don’t have space for all this junk.
Woman: I know.....! But, you can talk, you’ve kept some ridiculous clothes, just look at those old yellow and red striped trousers. What on earth possessed you to buy those?
Man: How dare you? They’re vintage Versace. I used to get a lot of female attention when I wore these.
Woman: Mmm, I bet you looked like Rupert Bear.
Man: Trust me, I looked good. In fact I’ll try them on just to show you.
Woman: OK, I’m impressed. You look fantastic, you can keep them.
Man: Oh now that looks nice, when did you buy that dress?
Woman: Nice? It’s divine. I actually bought it in a little boutique in the Latin quarter of Paris, in the early 90’s. Shall I try it on?
Man: Go ahead.
Woman: Can you fasten the button at the back?
Man: (whistle) Very elegant, I can’t imagine what you looked like in Paris? Who’s the designer?
Woman: Aaah, now that’s a secret, it was a very little shop, owned by somebody who enjoyed playing with material, and there’s no way I’m throwing this dress away.
Man: Alright then, but, let’s stop playing at dressing up and get serious, or we are never going to move house.