Dress for Success

Introduction

Hi, it is good to be back.

I hope you are all well. If you are in LA, you are in my thoughts. Like most of us passively observing this horror, words cannot encapsulate how sorry I am that you are experiencing the devastation of the loss of lives, pets, memorabilia, and earthly possessions. I hope for moments of reprieve and care.

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Over the holiday, I caught up on reading many bookmarked newsletter texts, and I am excited about what I hope to publish in the coming months. For the last four months, I have experimented with a work wardrobe — although I do not go into an office — and have documented all of it. While assembling my observations for a newsletter, I read a chapter from one of the books I am still getting through on dressing up titled “Dress for Success,” where several women discuss various hangups, revelations, and conclusions regarding dressing for their vocations.

At the same time, I have been working locally with the manager at a hotel restaurant I frequent on her work wardrobe. I noticed Megan within the first month of moving to Grass Valley because every time I saw her, she was impeccably dressed in long dresses, sensible shoes, large belts, and always the right accessories and hairstyle to match. Before beginning work with anyone, I send a form with questions that might help me understand their wardrobe inhibitions and how I can help. Megan admits in her response that significant life changes have affected how she presents herself which means she is meticulous about how she shows up to work. She told me about the time a patron spat on her.

Before dressing Megan, I never considered other meanings for dressing for success outside of career ascension. While reading “Dressing for Success,” I observed that most of the women admit that how they dress affects how people treat them, and none of the revelations shock me because I, too, have noticed the difference in how people treat me based on how I dress (more on that in the newsletter about my work attire). Many of them share how they combat prejudices at work, and I am very impressed with their solutions and epiphanies.

Unlike most people I work with, Megan doesn’t need my help styling herself because she excels at it. Instead, we address fit concerns, I repurpose items in ways that may not be obvious because of her limited shopping budget and offer new ways of styling items that do not get enough use in a work-appropriate way. Megan’s work attire criteria are stricter than anyone else I’ve worked with, which is why I chose to work with her. I found it interesting to work with someone with restrictions I never had to consider for myself or my other clients, and I hoped it would improve my efforts with my wardrobe and clients.

While writing the newsletter on dressing for work, I became interested in what dressing for success means to you and how you may have overcome or lived with the restrictions of your work attire. I want to know how these restrictions for work attire have affected how you dress for other life functions. Do you follow some of the same rules in other dressing scenarios or overcorrect by doing the opposite? What bad, exemplary, or neutral dressing habits have you picked up in assembling and adhering to strict work attire? And if your work attire isn’t strict, how does it affect how you show up to work and other areas of your life? Do you have a self-imposed dress code? Please include any observations or anything else as you consider the questions here.

I look forward to sending that newsletter soon! It is filled with inspired outfits, and some I almost wore (and why I didn’t).

Here’s what I wore today for 5-hours of phone calls, writing, and email follow-ups at a cafe.

See ya!