Impressing Strangers

          I visited Baltimore this past weekend to meet Professors at Johns Hopkins, and to see if the Physics program there was a good fit for me.  While physicists are not renowned for their sense of style, many of my friends and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to dress for these grad school visits.  This led me to look into the fashion advice typically given to people interviewing for jobs.  What I found was sometimes practical and other times positively painful.

 For women  the rules were:

• Dress a step above how you would be expected to dress for a normal day of work
• Wear a suit, or dress, perhaps dress pants and a blazer for more casual jobs
• Do not wear anything too short, or tight, or low cut
• Wear make up, but not noticeable make up
• Do not wear any attention grabbing jewelry
• Do not wear fragrant perfume
• Do not wear very high shoes
• Do not paint your nails a noticeable color
• Your hair should be styled simply, neatly, and come in a human color
• Do not wear anything trendy it will make you look less serious
• Do not give the interviewer any reason to believe you have a body or a personality
• Curl into a ball and die         

For Men the rules were similarly exciting:

• Dress a step above what you would wear to work
• Wear neat, clean clothing, preferably a suit and tie, but maybe a blazer and dress pants
• If you must wear jewelry you may only wear a watch or a ring
• Leather dress shoes are the only footwear option
• Do not wear anything too trendy
• Do not attempt to be unique

         I want to understand how to balance the very restrictive expectations for how one has to dress to impress powerful strangers, with one's personal sense of style.  While it is important to dress in a way appropriate for your meeting with strangers who may control your life, its also important that you go into the situation feeling confident and comfortable.  Looking good in a traditional suit will not help you if you feel terrible.  Your clothing should give you a confidence boost to help you navigate these nerve racking situations.  I would say a reasonable goal is carve out a comfortable place for yourself within the existing rules for dressing to impress powerful strangers.  Think carefully about when to ignore, and when to follow the generic soul sucking fashion advice prescribed for interviews.  Try to introduce one unique element to your outfit--nothing crazy--just enough to remind yourself and your interviewer that you are a real human, and to give something to help them remember you.  

Wearing a top hat and being a dinosaur are not required
for a successful interview outfit.  Still you want to walk in
feeling about as snazzy as this dinosaur.

          When deciding what to wear to meet a powerful stranger, you should always get a sense of what the dress code is in the place you are visiting.  Talk to a human about this.  Dressing professionally means something different on the East Coast than it does on the West Coast, than it does in the South.  You will save yourself the stress of struggling to interpret cryptic terms such as "Business Casual" by calling Human Resources, or your recruiter, or someone connected to the powerful person you intend to meet, and just asking how to dress.  Yes, this requires talking to a real live human, but I assure you, you can do it.  This will give you a starting basis.  If you cannot get this information, lean on the conservative side of what you expect to be appropriate for the situation.  You will not be penalized for being slightly overdressed, but you may be looked down on for being slightly underdressed.

          From this information you can establish a basic idea about what to wear.  For men this is typically at least a blazer and nice pants.  At most this is a black suit.  Because men have limited clothing options, the condition and fit of the clothing become immensely important.  It is perfectly fine if you cannot afford a high quality suit.  If the dress code allows it, you can invest in a nice blazer instead.  If that is still out of budget, take the blazer or suit you already own to the tailor or dry cleaner for cleaning, repair and fitting prior to the interview.  A cheap suit that fits well, and looks tidy will command more respect than a derelict expensive suit.  That said, you should still invest in a wool, silk, or cotton suit if you can afford to do so.  Less expensive suits are polyester, which will require more upkeep to make presentable.  If you do not own a suit or blazer, you can probably find an affordable one at a consignment store, a Men's Warehouse, or by waiting for major holiday sales.

For visiting a grad school, this is about as well as the professors themselves dress.
While the color of the pants may not show in this image, their lovely maroon powers
are the source of personality in this ensemble.

          In any of these cases, you will want to invest your money into the care and tailoring of your suit.  You should be able to move around comfortably.  The sleeves should end a half to quarter inch above your shirt sleeves, and land where your thumb meets your wrist.  The shoulder pads should end at your shoulders.  The bottom of your jacket should land around where your knuckles are when your arms hang straight down.  You should be able to slide your flat hand under the lapels when the top button is fastened, but you should not be able to fit a fist under the lapel without tugging on the buttons.  You may not be able to find a blazer that fits all of these criteria right away, but this should give you some ideas on what to look for.

          With all of this talk about the precise fit of a suit, it can be hard to imagine where the personality fits in.  Unless you are applying for a finance or legal job, you can have some fun with the color of the suit, dress shirt and tie (if you wear a tie).  Instead of a white dress shirt, you can try a pale pink, light blue, or lavender, paired with an optional tie of a darker complimentary color and possibly a simple pattern.  To exude extra personality consider a skinny tie or bow tie.  The skinny tie best suits leaner builds, but can look very fashionable on those who wear them well.  The bow tie is difficult to pull off without resembling a weatherman or college professor (unless that is your goal) and may exude more personality than your interviewer was prepared for.  To make the bow tie work, start with simple patterns or solid colors that compliment or are a similar color to your jacket without matching it identically.  You can wear a blazer and pants of different colors for less formal situations.  As I said last week, nice looking olive or maroon dress pants will make you look unique and put together as long as you match the other colors in your ensemble to your daring pants. If you must wear a suit, navy is likely the best color option.  It is elegant, and looks great on a wide variety of skin tones.  

          You will also want to make sure your shoes are shiny and without signs of wear.  Try to remember to bathe and shave the day you encounter the powerful stranger.  Releasing your man scent in their presence will not impress them.  You can be clean shaven, or wear a closely cropped groomed beard. Your lumberjack beard may hurt you in more conservative environments.  Outside of these you can rock your inner lumberjack as long as said lumberjack keeps his beard clean and neatly kempt.

          Now maybe a neatly kempt face, clean body, well fitting clothing, and shiny shoes don't make you feel confident, even with the possible addition of interesting colors.  Maybe you feel best in crazy patterns, mutton shops, and gym shorts.  In this case you must be sneaky with your personality.  You can wear a fun jacket and colorful patterned scarf right before you walk into meet the powerful stranger, and then remove them before walking in to meet them.  This gives you a chance to have a more funky layer of clothing on that you can remove right before the stranger with a boring sense of style sees you.  The other option is to wear something under your clothing that makes you feel confident, maybe its a silly shirt you can fit under your dress shirt, maybe its a pair of banana boxers, or flamingo socks. In the most conservative environments, I would be cautious about the flamingo socks, as they may look unprofessional if someone spots them.  Regardless of what you wear on top, you can at least have this little bit of secret joy to give you the boost you need.

Your secret weapon for serious interviews

          For women, dressing professionally can be especially restrictive, as looking too feminine can come off as unprofessional.  I find no joy in a pant suit, business appropriate high heels, and straightened natural colored hair.  So in navigating professional clothing I put a large amount of thought into which interview dress rules to follow and which to disregard.  As with men, the most important thing is to look neat.  This could mean executing a slightly unique but subtle style of make up expertly, or aiming for that 'natural' makeup look.  Looking neat means wearing clothing that fits you properly, is free of stains or damage, wearing shoes that are in good condition and arranging your hair into a controlled shape, that will not require you to fuss with it in front of the powerful stranger.  If you do not have money for professional clothing, you can get said clothing from a consignment store, or on sale.  As with men, having clothing in good condition is more important than having high quality clothing.

Have we seen this before?  Yes!  It's my surviving the cold
sweater dress.  It is also my surviving grad school visits
sweater dress.

         For more casual settings a women may impress an interviewer wearing a dress or a blazer and dress pants.  These must be fairly conservative.  The skirt should reach to about your knee, Your top should cover your shoulders and back, and should be neither low cut nor tight.  You can make the dress more interesting by wearing a cowl  neck, a wide neck with a long subtle piece of jewelry, or with an interesting but simple pattern.  If you are opting for a blazer, and pants or a skirt, black pants or a black skirt will give you the most flexibility, but gray and navy are also workable options.  These can be paired a variety of different blazer colors.  The blouse you wear under the blazer should have a conservative cut, but may have more color, or a more interesting but still mature pattern than other pieces of your outfit.  The blouse is not particularly exposed, so you can sneak in some personality here.  Pick a blouse with a color that brings you joy and suits you well.  If this color is very bright, or does not match your jacket, try to find a more toned down version of the color.  Some professional blouses have ruffles or knots.  If you are fond of these, they offer another route for injecting personality into your outfit.  You can also add a colorful scarf over a plain blouse as long as the colors play nice with each other

While adding a scarf over pajamas (as shown here) is rarely
 if ever interview appropriate, you can at least appreciate
what a more formal scarf would look like.

          For more formal encounters you may need a real woman's suit.  You have more freedom to select interesting colors than men do, but navy or black are safe defaults when in doubt.  In these situations you still need the professional blouses described above, though you may want to stick to more conservative colors.  If you opt for a black or navy suit, you have some limited options as to where the personality can sneak in.  You may wear a high quality colorful scarf, or interesting shoes.  Most interview advise suggests that you wear mid to low black closed toed heels.  As someone who needs the extra height, I would  simply disregard this advice, and wear high black heels that I can walk in, or high heels that have a bit of color for less formal settings.   This is one example of how you can decide if the typical advice about dressing for strangers appropriate for you, and if not, how to adapt the look without offending these mysterious beings who seem to have painfully uninteresting fashion sense.

These are interview appropriate heels.  If some fool thinks they
are too high, you can stab them using these same heels to prove
them wrong.

          The key to bending the typical  rules of interview style is to do so, while maintaining the tidy kempt appearance, and choosing your streaks of personality strategically.  Balance out your unorthodox element with more conservative elements elsewhere.  If you find you must wear a suit, and hair and makeup that does not make you feel confident and powerful, there is one last trick you can use.  Like the boys, you can wear a fun overcoat before encountering the powerful stranger.  You can also wear your sexiest undergarments under your suit.  No one will see them, and you get to feel powerful and sexy when wearing something that would have the opposite effect on you otherwise.

I like to sneak my personality in through my shoes.  These deep
red shoes are conservative enough for a less formal meeting
with a powerful stranger, but powerful enough to crush your enemies.

          Remember the most important thing is that you feel like an unstoppable dinosaur when walking into the meeting with a powerful stranger.  Your confidence and comfort will speak for themselves.  That said, you still have to play the game, and dress in a way unoffensive to the interviewer.  So do dress according to the guidelines of the environment you are entering, but don't forget to insert a bit of your own personality into your outfit as well.  Just remember to balance your more rebellious pieces with more traditional pieces elsewhere.  If executed well that scarf or those shoes may be the small token that leaves you feeling unstoppable, and helps your interviewer remember you.