Dress for Success

September 5, 2008

choices of dress, as is a waitress or any other job calling for a uniform. Even within the business industry, some corporations (like IBM) have dress codes wherein a white shirt, dark suit and dark tie are the ’silent uniforms’. If you do have a choice, make it work for you. When you’re comfortable, at ease, happy with yourself, and feeling good because of how you ‘present’ yourself, then the chances of success are much greater. However, as the unknown philosopher has said, “No amount of fine clothes can hide a clown.”

How a person dresses says as much about them as does their body language. Is the person traditional, behind the times, progressive, cutting edge, conservative, a risk taker, quiet, or expressive? All of these traits are seen in how one dresses. Do you want to be successful?

You don’t have to spend a lot of money on clothes but you do need a reasonable budget for clothing. You can’t just buy an outfit or pair of pants every five years when yours are too slick to sit in a leather chair or have a tear in them. The
“It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.” Henry David Thoreau

One of the areas where most people are conservative in the work place is in the area of dress! Books have been written on how one should ‘dress for success’ but it goes deeper than that. One should dress not just for success but for ‘themselves’ and for the ‘confidence building’ that therein produces such success!

Proverbs 31 woman was a combination weaver, seamstress, and fashion designer. She “selected wool, flax, and worked with eager hands. She made linen garments and sold them.”

The early Puritans are depicted as ‘fashion dead’, stuck in black when actually the opposite is true! Their black label with white edges was ‘cutting edge’ style. They understood that black was a power color.

“Why do we assume that James Dean or Jean-Paul Gaultier wear black out of a sense of style but the Puritans wore black out of an absence of style? In October, 1993, Calvin Klein unveiled his “New Puritan”look with clean straight lines and crisp blacks and whites prompting the Independent’s fashion critic to observe, ‘the clothes of the prayer meeting are on the streets’. When the new sophisticated urbanite dons the garb of the Puritans it is considered chic. When the old, unsophisticated Puritan dresses like a Puritan it is considered the absence of chic.” Calvin, Meet Calvin Klein, Paul Marshall

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