Do Clothes Make or Break the Moment?
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on September 22, 2008 under First Impressions, Non Verbal Moments | 
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The stars were on parade at the Emmy’s last night – each having their Make or Break Moment live on the red carpet as paparazzi snapped and interviewers grabbed the most famous of the famous for a 30 second sound bite.
Make or break moments can happen even before you open your mouth. So often we make assumptions about people based on their dress. Remember Bjork and the famous swan dress?
As a speaker, a rule of thumb is to dress one step up from the dress code of your audience. When I was still working for Cole National/Pearle Vision, we were acquired by Luxottica Corporation/Lenscrafters. As a home office employee going through the long drawn out process of being sold, the dress code had been down graded from business to business casual to “whatever the hell you want.” Most of us wore t-shirts and jeans.
The day after the purchase was final, the Luxottica officials were scheduled to come and meet with the department heads, directors and vice presidents. The Lux people had done their research and were familiar with our lack of dress code. Following the “dress one step up” rule, they arrived in polo shirts and Dockers expecting to address an audience in jean chic.
However, in an unspoken gesture of solidarity, without exception, the Cole/Pearle managers arrived in full on dress mode. We all dusted off our two and three piece suits, spit shined our infrequently worn dress shoes and even took a shower. We knew that the first impression would be critical if we wanted to continue as a valuable asset to the company.
After greeting the audience, the clearly uncomfortable Lux leaders joked that they had wanted to fit in by dressing in a business casual mode and were surprised by our formal dress.
“We’re here for a week,” the president said “and we’ve only packed business casual clothes, so could you please go back to your normal fashion of wearing jeans?”
The point was – without us saying a word – our dress had set the tone; had raised us up in their estimation.
Isn’t the same true for you with your customers? What does your fashion sense say about you to your customer? Do you project an image of cleanliness, professionalism and authority? Or have you just thrown on your most comfortable clothes hoping that WHAT you say will be valued above HOW you look?
CNN offers an article on how to dress for success.
Interested in helping others make a statement? Check out Dress for Success a charitable organization that provides business attire for those in need.
Meagan Francis offers a guide to creating a Dress Code for your Associates.
Finally, in the background of the above picture of the lovely Felicity Huffman, check out this guy. Don’t you wonder what impression he was striving for?
