Dressing with purpose

"Dress for the job you want, not the job you have," it’s said.

Overall, it's sound advice. If you don't know how to look, overdressing is always safer than underdressing. But that begs the question: why don’t you know how to look?

After all, this is the age of the Internet. Pretty much anything you might want to know can be found at the touch of the button. If you’re reading this, you’ve officially lost any excuse for not knowing how to dress at any event you might find yourself at.

“Business casual? That’s a bit vague.” Look it up. “Black tie? What’s that?” Look it up. Yes, yes, you could play it safe and overdress, but that carries the risk of coming across as arch and aristocratic, and putting off everyone around you. Instead, I recommend a conscious effort to understand the role your outfit plays.

I recommend dressing with purpose.

Consider this: clothing is a tool, just like a hammer or a cooking pot, and like any tool it serves a specific purpose…but only if you know what you’re doing. Some clothing is built with physical needs in mind: sportswear are designed for comfort and durability, cold weather clothing is designed to keep you warm, and so on. That’s important, but it’s not what I’m talking about.

Beyond the physical level, the purpose of clothing is to create a certain impression of yourself, a specific impact that affects not only how others think of you, but how you think of yourself. Uniforms, the clearest example of outfits with a specific purpose, proclaim that the wearer is acting in a specific role, and subtly nudge their behavior in that direction. Suits are a bit less specific in their meaning, but also convey a clear message about the type of image their wearer wants to project. Otherwise, individual pieces can be mixed and matched to create an outfit that sends exactly the message you want and makes you feel exactly how you want.

I’m not going to go into further detail about which pieces cultivate which impressions; entire books can, and have, been written on the subject. For anyone interested in traditional menswear, Alan Flusser’s Dressing the Man is a fairly comprehensive and accessible guide on the subject. (Unfortunately, I know of no such guide for women’s clothing. If you know of one, please tell me!)

One final note: it’s paramount that you feel comfortable in the outfit you wear. However snazzy it might look on a mannequin, if you don’t feel right wearing it, it won’t look good. Maybe that outfit needs one last thing to finish it, maybe you’ve overdone it, or maybe it’s just not your thing. Develop a feeling for it, and figure out what works best for you.

So, what is dressing with purpose? First: understanding what kind of impression you want to make. Second: finding clothing that creates that impression. Third: making sure it feels right!