Career advice columnists and well-intentioned mentors will always tell you to dress not for the job you have, but for the job you want.  Remember Melanie Griffith in Working Girl?   If we could see beyond the sexist and class-based stereotypes, the movie clearly made the point about the importance of image (clothing, grooming, even speech patterns) in the workplace or, at least, some workplaces.  Granted, I would never want to work somewhere that placed so much emphasis on image, especially if image took precedence over hard work and productivity.  Oh, that’s right, I did work at a place like that…for 10 years.

Every workplace has a dress code, explicit or not.  When I left my job at a small arts college for a position with more responsibility at a conservative, Christian university, I was keenly aware that it was time to go shopping for some new clothes.  If people didn’t wear suits every day, they certainly wore jackets and were fully accessorized.  My department was by no means casual, but it was certainly more relaxed than others on campus.  It depends on the workplace, the company image, and the people within the department, I suppose.  The staff at the business school proudly boasted that they didn’t believe in  “casual Fridays.”  And I do understand – certain industries have a professional image to uphold in order to be trusted and taken seriously.  But what I’ve learned is that there’s a big difference between a professional need to be taken seriously within your industry and simply taking yourself too seriously.  In my department, casual Fridays  meant nothing less than designer jeans and cute flats.  Pedicures were de rigure and there was nary a gray hair in sight.

The arts college had a dress code that was a sort of non-dress code.  That is, until the day when Human Resources insisted that one of my staff stop wearing a (matching!) sweatshirt and sweatpants every day.  While we didn’t want to appear to stuffy and out of touch with our artistic constituents, and jeans and t-shirts were the norm, there was something about the sweat suit that reflected, consciously or not, a certain lackadaisicle attitude about work.  And it showed, in more ways than one.  I’m not so naïve as to believe that how we dress does not reflect our self-image.  I know as well as any woman how well a fabulous outfit can boost self-confidence.  Looking good, feeling good.

Flash forward and I’m again working at an art college.  It’s no exaggeration to say that 10 months without Spanx and pumps has done a whole lot of good for my soul.  When I interviewed for the job, I thought carefully about what I would wear, as we all do.  I knew instinctively that if I wore my usual black business suit that I would be perceived as less than a good fit with the school and the community.  In many ways, I hadn’t recognized the many signs that my old job had not been a good fit for me.  Dress code was one of them.  And while we wish appearances, like dress code, didn’t matter, the truth is, image means a lot and people judge us by how we dress.  In turn, the environment we’re in determines how we’re judged.  Dress code is part of the cultural fit of an organization.  In my case, I’ve found that a most relaxed dress code is directly correlated to the importance of work over image.   That is to say, people don’t really care how you dress at the art school, it’s the work that counts.  I’m working within a different culture and yes, it’s a good fit for me.

And so it came as quite surprise when this morning I had the inimitable moment with my high school daughter, telling her to change her outfit because she “wasn’t wearing that to school.”  Honestly, I never thought that I would be THAT mother.  But when she came downstairs this morning wearing a bandeau bra and a thin, flimsy, clingy tank top that was akin to underwear, even I had to put my foot down.  Truth is, she didn’t put up much of a fight.  How we dress conveys a whole lot about how we’re perceived. Thankfully, I have a daughter who knows her self-worth enough not to argue with me.  And part of me is quite proud of standing my ground, even as I debate whether or not to wear flip-flops to work on a summer Friday. (for the record, I can’t bring myself to do it.) 

Dress code, shmess code.  It really comes down to common sense.  Look around you – if you want to succeed in that particular environment, you will have to adapt.  The question is, how far are you willing to go to adapt?  My business suits are in the back of my walk-in closet, carefully packed into suit bags.  My pumps are carefully stored away in shoe bags. They are, after all, good quality and well-kept, just as my image was at the old job.   Spanx?  I’d love to toss them with all the symbolism of women burning their bras in the 60’s, but I haven’t…yet.  In the meantime, I haven’t worn them in months and I feel much more comfortable, and more importantly, more true to myself, wearing cute, but casual outfits every day.  And there’s an interesting side effect to all this – I’ve found that I’m able to focus on my work and be appreciated for my work, rather than working to maintain an image that at least, for me, was out of sync with my true self.  My true self doesn’t wear flip flops to work, but as for those 3 hour meetings…I still have them, but I’m a whole lot more comfortable sitting cross-legged without Spanx.