Category: Dress Code

Sartorial Self-Care for Peers

I studied the life work of Caroline Myss a medical intuitive. Her concept of Archetypes is right-on. Studying this I found out that I have a Fashionista archetype. There is such a thing!

Everything clicked into place after I bought and read the book Wear It Well by Allison Bornstein. Using the personal stylist’s Three Word Method I defined my style as Chic Quirky Confident.

Choosing and using wardrobe items for everyone not just women is a form of self-care. When dressing up gives a person joy they should not be ridiculed for their love of fashion.

This kind of self-care for us peers can help us feel good interacting with others. Dressing well can give us ease in our relationships. Years ago I met a peer who told me that this is why they dressed to appear normal when going outside. Precisely because your appearance is judged.

I joined a private online fashion community a year ago. Women post photos of outfits we’re dressed in to request feedback. I’ve figured out winning outfit combinations this way.

Everyone is positive. There’s a $25/monthly fee. This keeps out the trolls and anonymous hateful comments.

Polishing your presence is just a book or click away then. I completed a 5-outfit challenge for January by creating 5 new outfits out of clothes I already own.

“Shopping in your closet” is the way to go. Plus it’s OK to repeat outfits. Particularly when the outfits are “winners.”

Once you’ve fashioned this wardrobe it’s easier to choose and use clothing items each day. Think in terms of how you want to come across.

By automating your outfit choices you’ll have extra time in the morning. Start the day with an edge once you’re going out your front door.

Coming up a blog carnival of related topics beginning with my approach to dressing. Then a deep dive into what I’ve learned after viewing the webinar on Presence and Persona for women.

After this a focus on conducting a job search effectively linked to my recent experience helping out peers get jobs. Lastly a review of what I’ll call a “case study” in succeeding in business as a peer.

Finding Gender-Neutral Work Clothes

I want to talk in here about what I’m going to detail in a second career book I plan to publish:

Where can we buy reasonably priced gender-neutral work clothes?

I read that in multiple states in America, it’s becoming illegal to dress in Drag. Two years ago, I watched 7 episodes of Queer Eye one right after the other. Jonathan Van Ness the hairdresser on the show was a man and wore a green dress.

Have we gotten “there” to where a guy can wear a dress to an office job? Or a full face of makeup to a staff meeting?

Should we not be there yet, how do we get to the point where non-conforming individuals can dress as they please at work? Ideally liberating them via fashion freedom to turn in stunning results for the company.

I’m not a fan of working in a cubicle in an office (after my failed attempts to do that in the 1990s). At the height of COVID in our WFH remote jobs workers coveted the ease to dress however we wanted below the Zoom screen.

It begs the question: What if a person with a non-binary or other gender expression wants to work in an office? In New York City there are Queer in Every Career networking events.

Scouring the Adidas website (where I eye the Gazelle sneakers) I’ve seen links to their gender-neutral sportswear. A quick search on the DuckDuckGo search engine instead of Google returned lists of forward-thinking vendors who sell gender-fluid clothing.

Let’s face it that no time soon is Kohl’s or Macy’s going to sell genderless clothes to the masses. Fashion magazines years ago were quick to feature articles on designers who create gender-neutral items. From then to now you’ll need the big bucks to snag this alternative attire at stores you simply can’t walk down the street to shop in.

Here’s a roundup of the gender-neutral online retailers I found on DuckDuckGo:

Kirrin Finch comes in sizes XS-3XL. This menswear-inspired line features suit pieces and separates plus well-fitting shirts. Chinos to the tune of $160 and an evening suit for $575.

The Phluid Project sells clothing of brands that focus on the non-binary. The Project features queer trans Black Latinx and women-owned vendors online and at their bricks-and-mortar store in New York.

Collusion is the line that retailer ASOS launched as a unisex collection of trendy affordable animal-free clothing.

Gender Free World has clothes with four body-shape templates in sizes 4 to 20.

Big Bud sells ethically sourced items in sizes from XXS-7XL.

Peau de Loup comes in sizes 2 to 20.

Promoting the Business of You

I call the tactic of selling yourself to an employer promoting The Business of You. This is commonly referred to as Brand You.

Narrowing your job leads to the companies that fit with your work ethic can make all the difference.

Having to act against your nature to attempt to succeed on a job will only set you up to fail.

As evidenced by my ill-fated first career in the buttoned-up insurance field.

You’ll have an easier time of it when you’re interviewing for jobs that are the perfect fit.

Sometimes you won’t realize you’ve made a mistake until you’ve already tried on one career for size.

And the reverse can be true: having to keep your disability under wraps as you try to succeed in a traditional workplace can doom you to fail too.

Everyone blindly goes on Indeed.com to search for jobs. What if there was a better way? A way to find a job where your disability is an asset. Not the thing that employers use to rule you out.

Job search websites exist for individuals with disabilities.

An Accenture study proves that companies that hire people with disabilities obtain a higher shareholder return.

Not only this:

As per the Accenture study: “The GDP could get a boost up to $25 billion if just 1 percent more of persons with disabilities joined the U.S. labor force.”

Up next a list of job search websites geared to people like us.

Will You Fit into the Company Culture?

Here’s where it pays to take a rigorous accounting of your prior job environments.

At one ill-fated interview I went on in the 1990s the woman asked me what I liked best about my last job.

“I loved the interaction among coworkers,” doomed me as soon as I told her.

Apparently, for that woman at that job this wasn’t the right answer. Luckily, I wasn’t hired.

This is because the building would’ve been a 10-minute walk from the subway.  In that time, it took me at least two hours on the subway to get into Manhattan. Factor in a 10-minute walk in addition to the subway ride.

Having an isolated job at a desk away from coworkers would’ve sealed the deal that it wasn’t worth it to walk 10 minutes to get to an isolated building.

Today it’s imperative to research the business environment.

There’s been the opposite trend of “open offices” where everyone is working in one big room without dividers like in the traditional cubicle format.

Would you thrive in this workplace where you’re on display while going about your business?

As you can see, fitting into the company culture is imperative.

In my career handbook Working Assets I talk about qualifying your job leads like a salesperson qualifies their prospective clients to pitch a product or service to.

More on this in the next blog entry.

Dress Code Diversity

An innovative tactic for promoting Brand You is through how you dress. As I wrote in a blog entry innovative thinking should be prized as a tool to generate solutions that achieve profits for businesses. Visionaries are in the vanguard in how we dress as well. Restricting the type of clothes, a person wears on their job can backfire.

A more relaxed dress code can promote gender equality. A lot of women prefer to wear pants not skirts or dresses. Allowing staff to dress in their own style within the bounds of what’s appropriate can boost morale. Forty-five percent of firms that instituted a casual dress code saw increased productivity.

Adhering to a strict dress code rules out hiring a diverse talent pool. Individuals who don’t dress in a traditional style are shut out of the workplace at classic companies.

For those of us loathe to wear a suit on the job I recommend getting a job in a public library or other non-corporate environment. I can remember all those suits I wore in the 1990s to my insurance office jobs. Good riddance to the 1990s—and to dressing in boring, bland outfits with no pizzazz.

In the coming blog entry, I’ll talk about a real issue in the workplace for people who don’t conform. Though it begs the question as to whether there can be a “norm” from which others deviate.

I say: hold on. Not so fast with the norms.