Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    I totally agree!!!  I think it's time for the professional men and
    especially women of the world to rebel against the silly dress for
    success rule!  If a person can do the job and/or knows what he/she
    's talking about it shouldn't matter what he/she decides to wear!
    
    I remember a friend telling me that women professionals should never
    wear pink, frilly dresses, dangling earrings, or open toed shoes
    to meetings, if they want to be taken seriously by men.  She said
    professional women should not dress as though they are looking for
    a dinner date!  What hogwash!  If everybody just started wearing
    what they want instead of those ugly, plain suits, what could anyone
    do about it?  I bet, given the choice, most women would either wear
    jeans or something really feminine.
    
    Wearing a suit everyday, or "dressing for success", is virtually
    the same as wearing a uniform, and that just takes away from the
    freedom of the individual to express him/herself.
    
    Lorna
    

    One of the things I like about working in a primarily engineering
    facility (Spitbrook) is that every range of dress for both men and
    women can be seen all over the building.  If I wear a suit and
    closed-toe heels, there will still be a number of people better
    dressed than I am.  If I wear clean jeans and a clean T-shirt, there
    will be a large number of people "worse" dressed than I am.  (My
    jeans don't have holes in the knees! :-)  )
    
    With that kind of range available, it's easy for me to dress for
    each day depending on what I have to do.  If I have to meet with
    someone from marketing, I wear a dress or a suit.  If I am
    travelling on business in the south, I pack good clothes (and
    even bring my travel iron!).  If it's a day when I have dirty work
    to do, I wear my jeans.   Most of the time I can wear long, comfortable
    skirts and nice cotton sweaters, button down collar shirts, and
    jerseys.  I feel fine for almost any situation which could unexpectedly
    occur.
                                
    John Molloy says that skirts and sweaters will immediately flag
    the wearer as a secretary.  There are many places in Digital where
    that's just not true.  (Lots of individual contributors wear skirts
    and sweaters.  Some supervisors and managers do, too.)
    
    There probably are companies where that is true, and that's the value 
    of Molloy's book...knowing when to use the observations he has made.
                                                          
    (Most women I have met who have jobs over level 11 (as best as I
    can figure) do wear suits most of the time.)
    

    I know a couple of men who work for other companies who were bitten by
    the dress-for-success bug -- they conformed so completely to the
    uniform that they succeeded in making themselves and their
    accomplishments indistinguishable from everybody else's.  They had
    done nothing to make their upper management recognize their existence.
    
    One man was specifically told that he was too much a "herd player" who
    couldn't be expected to provide the leadership a manager has to
    provide. 

    Management may wish those it approves of to fit a certain range
    of values, but on the whole it doesn't want everyone to be a clone
    of a particular manager or management style.  

    --bonnie

    my notion of dressing for success is buying an all-coffee coloured
    wardrobe so the spills don't show...
    

    Boy, if Suzanne was here, she'd be yelling, [see refs POWER-HOW,
    and Women 2 Money @ DEC], but I won't do it for her as I didn't
    agree with it all...
    
    Suffice it to say that I had 2 interviews @ DEC: one was with another
    group who turned me down flat, and of course the second was more
    successful :) -- I wore a suit and skirt to the first and a tuxedo
    (can _you_ tie a bow tie?) to the second.  As my behavior didn't
    vary from the first interview to the second, and the groups were
    very similar, it seems to me that to be accepted in a man's world,
    a TUXEDO is how to dress for success...
    
    Lee

    A certain female v.p. of DEC was seen today wearing a very attractive
    hot pink outfit... 
    
    Yeah, RG!!
    
    grins,
    Marge

    I was given Dress for Success several years ago and when I need
    a good laugh I pick it up and read a chapter. In my opinion, Molloy
    is trying to clone women to dress more like men.  
    
    I much prefer to dress by color than by style. I follow the season
    coloring system, which breaks the colors into the four seasons.
    My season is winter, this consists of black, white, true brights
    and some ice colors. My wardrobe is mostly black, white, red and
    grey. I wear lots of red, and just about every time I do I get a
    compliment. I have 3 red suits, one with pants, two with skirts,
    and feel they are just as professional as someone in a grey flannel.
     

    
    I have a button that says "Undress for Success".  I don't wear it
    to work (well, not yet).  I have some suits in my closet that I
    never wear.  I know I bought the first one for interviews -- I wore
    it to one interview 8 years ago and didn't get the job.  I'm not
    sure why I bought the other two, but I've never worn them. 
    
    I'm curious about this season coloring system.  I almost always
    snicker when I see ads for consultation or full-blown courses to 
    find out what colors are best for you, but -- would you tell me 
    something about it? 
    
    CQ

As good a place as any for an anecdote about the "old" Digital.

I started my career at Dec as a software specialist in Stockholm. We
competed for a very large contract at Volvo (automating their car
production line), and I visited them several times to discuss my part of
the programming task (converting their huge suite of Fortran to RSX11-D,
and revising the terminal driver for their 5-channel telex machines).  When
visiting them, I wore my "good" sport coat, a tie that wouldn't have been
out of place in San Francisco in 1967, and perfectly adequate shoes
(adequate for walking, that is). 

We got the contract.  My conversion program did 95% of the editing, and the
terminal driver took only one day to debug. 

Several years later, I was visiting them on another matter, and joined a
bunch of Volvo people for lunch.  One of their vice presidents sat with us.
He talked about the competition for the contract, and said that, when it
became clear that Volvo was leaning toward Dec, the IBM salesman asked what
Volvo needed from them.  The VP said he wanted to talk to IBM's technical
people, not to their salesmen. 

"No problem -- I'll bring up our best technical people from Brussels."

On the day of the meeting, the Volvo VP went to the airport to greet the
IBM technical team. 

"When they got off the plane," he said to me, "I could tell by their shoes
that they were salesmen." 

-----

Moral: Dec sent the people-who-were-going-to-do-the-work on the salescall.
We were clean, neat, and tidy, but we (and the customer) knew we weren't
there for our bright cheerful smiles. 

Dress for success only works when your only product is your image.

Martin.

    re: .5
    That was great!  Would a tuxedo go with my Reeboks?_:-)
    
    re: -1
    No wonder we're gaining on IBM.
    
    Another anecdote....  I wore a dress to work last week and
    a co-worker/friend came up to me and said "Forgot to do laundry
    again, Mary?"
    
    	(...grumble, mumble,.. you know they've got your number when...:-)

    Re: seasons
    
    There was a very popular book out about two years ago which suggested
    that each woman falls into one of the four seasonal categories -
    fall, winter, spring, summer.  I think it's winter and summer that
    have a basically blue undertone, and spring and fall with have a
    basically yellow undertone, but I'm not positive.
    
    I think the book was called "Color Me Beautiful".
    
    According to this theory, certain colors make you look great, and
    others make you look terrible.  The ones that make you look great
    are almost always in your personal "palette".  The book had printed
    pages to tear out and take shopping with you.  Or alternatively
    you could pay around $100 and have your colors professionally "done"
    and receive a whole book of fabric swatches.
    
    People never seem to be able to decide whether I am "spring" or
    "summer".  (I lean towards spring myself--blond hair, blue eyes,
    fair skin with a pink coloring.)
    
    I never went to have my colors done because the colors they suggest
    for a "spring" are all the ones I buy anyway--lavender, medium blues,
    pinks, and pastels. I also wear some of the colors they suggest
    for a "summer" person.   I also have a few wild prints in reds and
    browns that I happen to like, but which aren't supposedly good for
    me.  Oh well.
    
    If you are interested, Christine, I have two friends in Acton whom
    I respect a lot (both women) who have made a business out of color
    consultation.  They are warm and friendly and do a really good job.    
          
    I haven't yet felt the need to go myself, though.
    
                 
    Holly

    Hi folks,
    
    This topic was brought up in another note.  Please refer to
    note 126 for other lively opinions.
    
    ;^)
    
    Nancy

    
    When I first came to DEC there was this group of women sitting together
    at lunch, all wearing dark blue suits, white blouses, and red or yellow
    ties. I thought they were tour guides or something because no one else
    dressed like that, so I asked a friend. She laughed at my ignorance of
    the "dress for success" ethic & explained to me in hilarious/derogatory
    detail about the "suits" (folks who wear suits even though they don't
    need one for the job). Now, everytime I see a "suit" I have to smile...
    
    

        The basic "dress for success" principal does work--how you
        appear affects how people react to you, including people whose
        opinions are critical to your career development. what many
        people fail to understand is that for different jobs in
        different companies different sets of standards and different
        levels of variety exist. 
        
        On the whole, I agree that people should get used to variety and
        not assume or attempt to enforce uniformity. The question is how
        do you reconcile that view with the fact of appearance setting
        expectations?
        
        My answer is to adopt an appearance with which I am comfortable
        but which sets few expectations or contradictory ones. I try not
        to fit into specific molds, nor to be too predictable. I have
        found over the last decade or so that at DEC at least this works
        fairly well. It also seems to work for others.
        
        In my case my clothing ranges from faded jeans with at most very
        discreet holes in them and a T-shirt, through chinos or other
        non-dress slacks and an open necked shirt, to a suit with a
        dress turtle neck with French cuffs to capes, tunics, and
        hand-made billowy-sleaved shirts of the past couple of
        centuries. I don't own and will not wear a tie.
        
        The effect of all of this is that I match the "hacker" (jeans
        and T-shirt), "traditional engineer" (chinos and open necked
        shirt, pens in pocket), "slightly eccentric" (suit with
        turtle-neck), and "what the Hell was that?" (tunics, jewelry,
        capes etc.), and my own niche (the Erol Flynn shirts, with
        slacks) which is a little flamboyant and unusual but not
        shocking. 
        
        There's a woman engineer in our group who exhibits (at least) an
        equally broad range. I've seen her in jeans and men's
        undershirts, fatigue pants, tight skirts, business suits, very
        feminine dresses, and lord only knows what else. It is, to me at
        least, always a pleasant surprise to see what she'll show up in
        next. She always looks good, but I can't pigeon-hole her by her
        appearance. I have no choice but to react to the person and not
        the clothes, and when I do that the fact that she is an eager
        and very capable engineer shines through. The lady is going
        places, I'll bet you. and when she gets there, I expect her to
        keep doing the unexpected.
        
        My own advice is to wear a wide variety of clothing, to have a
        large number of images, including one that is fairly uniquely
        yours, and to select amongst them on a regular basis, depending
        upon what you will be doing, who you will be seeing and how you
        feel on a given day. 
        
        This will only work if you combine it with being good at and
        comfortable with whatever it is you do. If you don't give people
        an easy appearance to judge you by, they will focus on your
        performance and other behavior, so it had better have a positive
        message of its own. A highly competent maverick is one thing,
        someone who refuses to play ball and screws up on their own is
        quiet another. 
        
        JimB.

    I normally where 1) whatever fits me and 2) whatever will keep me
    warm when the air condintionning in the building goes out awack
    or cool when the heat is too hot in the winter and 3) whatever I
    feel like on that particular day.  Period.  I own two suits and
    I tried wearing them to work and everone asks, "got a job interview
    today".
    
    I'm wearing a very professional looking dress on my next job interview.
    AND IT'S PINK!!!!!  
    
    Now, here's a comment I heard awhile back but I can't give the author
    the credit.
    
    	"Don't dress where you are, dress where you want to be".
    
    
    Now, I ask you, what does that mean?

    It means that if you are looking to be promoted you should look
    as if you'll 'fit in' with the people at that level. If they
    are all dressed more formally than your current group,you should
    dress up to theirs. Otherwise, they may view you as not being
    able of maintaining the 'image' they try to project as a group.

    
    
    	its called fake it until you make it!!!
    or
    
    	you have to be the part before you become the part.
    
    		wendy o'
    

    No, it's called puttin' on the uniform if you want to be
    on the team. I suppose the concept isn't as familiar to
    women because haven't traditionally been encouraged to 
    play team sports. Nowadays this is changing. Todays'
    young women, with high school sports backgrounds, are
    less likely to have a problem with this. Of course us
    loners aren't likely to join teams for sports or work.

re .15
>    read a little sarcasm into what I wrote.

	I was never any good at debugging sarcasm.  I tried logically
	reversing the sentences and trying them in different combinations,
	but still did not get a unique result.  One clue you give is...

>    ...were so quick to assign labels.  It would seem to
>    me that in this day and age one might be a little more cautious
>    about tossing around labels that are offensive.

	Perhaps you could say which label was offensive and what
	"tipped you off" into taking it personally?

	Oh yes,  I assigned labels as a logical consequence of how they
	were applied to me.  But please be assured that I take no credit
	for the original work.
	
Simon.

    Truce.  Let's change the subject and talk about something more
    productive!
    /Len
    

    I just found an article called "Pressure of Menswear on the Neck in
    Relation to Visual Performance", in the journal "Human Factors", 1987,
    29(1), 67-71, by Leonora M. Langan and Susan M. Watkins. 
    
    They studied the effects of shirt/tie tightness on visual performance,
    because the opthalmic artery is one of the first branches of the
    carotid artery (in the neck), and all indications were that any
    physiological problems were due to changes in blood flow.

    Here are the conclusions of their paper:

         This study yielded several significant conclusions:
	    (1) Tight neckwear can decrease a man's visual performance as
	        measured by the CFF [critical flicker frequency] test.
	    (2) Visual performance does not return to normal immediately
	        after tight neckwear is removed.
	    (3) A large percentage of the subjects we tested (67%) wore
	        tight neckwear.

	 We found it interesting that the average amount of tie tightness
	 alone was approximately two-thirds of the total neckwear pressure.
	 This finding points to the tie rather than the shirt as the major
	 factor in neckwear pressure.
         ...
	 Although this study focused on visual impairment, its findings,
	 which link blood-flow restriction to changes in physiological
	 function, hold implications for a variety of other sensory and
	 cognitive functions.

    I just showed the article to someone, and he said, "Is that why
    managers can't think?"

    About 8 years ago, Chuck Monia (then of VMS, now of Alliant)
    told me:
    
    	"It's well known that neckties cut off the flow of blood
    	 to the brain.
    
    	 At Digital, when they make you a manager, they make you
    	 wear a tie.
    
    	 The tighter they pull, the higher you go."

    And now you understand why those of us from the Western states refer
    to a hanging as a nectie party!
    
    --bonnie
    

	Has anyone else run into the contradictory view of dress for
	success?  At DEC, at least, I've noticed that people who routinely
	"dress" for work (suit, shirt and tie, dress, etc) when it isn't
	necessary/expected are viewed suspicously.  "Aw, they're just dressed-
	for-success, bet they don't *know* anything."

	Maybe the formula is starting to backfire now that it's been around
	long enough to be recognized?  Or at least within DEC and/or hi-tech
	industry?  

		Helen

    RE .24 Are you in Manufacturing ? Sales ? Different functions -
    different uniforms. Bet the best sales people dress 'business'.

    If anyone in my group shows up in "professional attire" or "dressed
    up", the "Oh, are you interviewing?" jokes spring up from everywhere.
    
    Dawn
    

    
    Over here its more 'Oh, going for an interview?'
    
    Dave

    Jane, 
    
    I have learned that "dressing for success" is really about
    determining your personal style. For years I have dressed
    professionally, but most times uncomfortably.  It's hard being a blue
    jeans person in the corporate world!
    
    Emily Chou is a fashion consultant who has written several books on
    personal style; I believe you can get copies from the library or
    any local book store.  I found these books to be very satisfying
    because they "squash" Molloy's theories, which I agree absolutely
    STINK!!   Happy Reading. -- Charlene               
                                                       

    
    
    the clothes i wear to a wedding
    (though i now boycott that institutional process)
	and the clothes i wear to work
    and the clothes i play basketball or football in
    and the clothes that i go to p-town in
    and the clothes that i wear to dinner or a play or....
    anything/anywhere.....
    
    are all the same.
    
    i have 1 set of clothes for all occasions.
    
    

              
                           -< LIVING PROOF>-         
    
    Here I sit, a LEVEL 10 (MIS MFG), reading this NOTESfile in
    blue-jeans and Reeboks.
    
                                         Sign me,
                          
                                         Comfortable

    Wearing the same clothes for all occassions strikes me as lacking
    imagination.  Rick, do you also eat the same food at all meals?
    Do you play the same song for any event?  Go the same place for
    every dinner out?
    	Or do you just want to be known as someone who refuses to
    assimilate into society?
    
    DRC
    
    
    
    
    

    "Dress for success" can be a matter of opinion - I do know of others
    who were descriminated (men and women) against because of their refusal
    to follow corporate dress codes. 
    
    My opinion is that I dress in what I will feel comfortable in...
    Sometimes the way I feel is related to the way I am dressed.
    
    I do not feel comfortable at a formal dinner or wedding in jeans
      but a nice dress or skirt/pants with a nice blouse will make
      me feel comfortable as well as attractive (matter of opinion I
      know).
    
    I do not feel comfortable visiting a customer site in jeans 
      but a professional (any color) suit (skirt or pants) will 
      make me feel comfortable as well as make the customer view
      me as the professional that I am.
    
      (some people/corporations are really into colors, like blue
      and grey: these can get boring after a while - you might start
      to feel blue and grey.)
    
    I do not feel comfortable bumming around the house in a dress
      but jeans, pajamas or sweats are great and help me feel relaxed.
    
    
    It's all what your comfortable with in the situation your in.
    
    And it is how "you" want others to perceive "you".
    
    Of course it is all a matter of opinion too...