Photo courtesy of CaptureFashion.com. Photographer: David Lundblad.
Now that we’re into summer, it’s time to take stock of your wardrobe. While weekends in Toronto are a sea of cut-off shorts, floppy sleeveless shirts and tattoos, the office is probably not the best place to sport your 511 cut-offs and vintage Guns’n’Roses tee. This advice should be amongst the most obvious you’ll ever read. If it is news to you, then perhaps you should turn to the sage advice offered by Prop Joe on The Wire: “Dress the part, be the part motherf—r.”
Every industry is different, but regardless of where you work or what you do, how you dress needs to follow at least some of the conventions in the office. Startup culture is very different from Bay St., but in either case, you don’t want how you dress to be the talk of the office. Today’s corporate culture tends toward business casual in many companies, but you should be able to tell what counts as “office appropriate” just by talking to your potential or new co-workers and looking at their attire. Business casual can mean many different things to many different bosses, so be perceptive and figure out precisely how casual you can go.
It all starts in the interview, which is, almost without exception, a time to dress your best. It’s always better to be overdressed than underdressed when you’re trying to make a good first impression. Since most jobs now require more than one interview, you can look to the recruitment process and the people you meet to figure out what you’ll need to wear on day one. Even once you have the job, your first days on the job are really just a continuation of the recruitment process, as your boss, co-workers and other senior staff size you up, including the clothes on your back.
Once you’ve been around for a while, there’s often a temptation to loosen up. You might notice co-workers sporting Lululemons or letting a bit of that full-sleeve tattoo slip into view. This could be fine in some workplaces, but rather than getting complacent, let your boss’s appearance lead your wardrobe. More than anyone else, your boss will pay attention to what you’re wearing every day. We’ve all heard the fairly dated line to “Dress for the job you want, not the one you to have.” A better approach would be to dress like your boss. It doesn’t make you a potential usurper, but someone who is perceptive enough to understand that by emulating your boss, you’re sending the best kind of message about how serious you take your job and where you want it to go.
Besides sending the right signals around the office and showing everyone that you’re ready to dress and be the part, new research suggests that what you wear might actually make you more confident and productive. If this is true, it means sweating it out in that three-piece suite might be worth it in 35 degree July weather. Not only will you get more done, but you might just turn into the office’s best-dressed employee.
We all know that your career is part brains and part performance. While everyone (hopefully) takes the brains part seriously, keep the performance part in mind as the weather goes from comfortably warm to excruciating in the coming months. While it might feel like a costume, your Monday-best outfit could mean more money, more respect and more efficiency.
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Kiel Hume writes for Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @kielculture.
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