That said I do think that clothes are kind of important; wearing a particular outfit, for me, can give you a certain level of confidence that otherwise you wouldn't be able to achieve. Clothes can also be a reflection of your personality; it sounds kind of cliche, but what you wear can tell people about what kind of person you are.
E.g. a friend of mine was having a hard time at school; she felt that the students weren't responding to her as they should, and she didn't feel she was respected by her colleagues; so she decided to try out an experiment: for a couple of days she dressed in a more 'formal' style in a bid to be taken more seriously. It certainly worked, and many of the staff and students complimented her on her new look (some even went so far as to say that she looked like she meant business). Nevertheless, after a couple of days she reverted back to her usual way of dressing, claiming that whilst she did feel, to an extent, empowered, she didn't feel like herself. This got me thinking should you change the way you look in order to confirm to a particular perception?
Would outfit 1 mean I was taken more seriously than outfit 2?
When I was training to be a teacher I found it difficult to know what to wear, particularly when it came to interviews. I was very much in the train of thought that I shouldn't pretend to be someone I wasn't; I would go to interviews in a smarter version of my regular clothes (this usually meant 50s style skirts and kitsch accessories). At the time I had my tongue pierced and thought nothing of going to interviews with my piercing in place. However, after a number of interviews (and one piece of particularly critical feedback that described me as 'too eccentric') I realised that people were possibly judging me on the way I looked, and that possibly people were making an assumption about the kind of person I was by the way I was dressed and the piercings I had (the debate over piercings and tattoos in the workplace is definitely the subject of a future post!). As a result my next interview saw me adopt a much more 'conventional' (to me) outfit: black jacket, white shirt and black skirt; I'm not sure if this had any affect on the outcome but I did get the job (although I was told this was on the condition the tongue piercing was removed). Now the question is, did I do the right thing in compromising who I am in order to secure a position? Because, whilst I tried for the first couple of weeks to adhere to this more conventional way of dressing, my own style soon started sneaking in. I don't believe that the students respond differently to me because of the way I dress; in fact, I think it sometimes helps, as students aren't 'scared' by the formality of a suit; however, I do think that I am judged (or taken less seriously) by my colleagues because of the way I dress.
The question is: is this right?
Should someone have to conform in order to be taken seriously? or should a person be judged purely on their ability to do their job?
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