Why is it so hard to choose an outfit for a board meeting or pitching to a potential client? The simple answer – because you care! You care how your audience will see you and naturally you want to create the right impression. Your appearance shows how much you respect yourself, and the people you will meet with today, which is why knowing your audience is really important.
- Know thy Audience
It may sound like a cliché, but ‘dress to impress’ really is what you’re aiming for. You want your potential clients and board room colleagues to believe that you are the authority in the room on your topic and are worth listening to. Think about the last meeting you had, how was the best person in the room dressed? Or, consider the last sales pitch where you were successful, what were you wearing and what was the client wearing? Most of the time, you want to aim higher than those around you. This doesn’t mean spending a lot of money or wearing a bright colour necessarily, it can be making sure your shirt is ironed, your blazer fits properly, your shoes are in good repair and keeping your hair neat and off your face. It doesn’t hurt to be overdressed, but you certainly will feel if you’re underdressed. Best avoid that feeling all together and carry on with what’s important.
- Wear the Right Cut
Even if you spent a truckload of cash on a fancy designer outfit, it won’t matter in the slightest if the cut isn’t right for your silhouette. You may as well have tipped your hard-earned cash into the rubbish bin. Time and time again, I see beautiful women wearing ‘trendy’ clothes, or worse ‘hiding’ in a blouse that’s not right for them and it makes me want to hand them something off the rack, right there and then that would suit them – even enough to burn their original outfit! Your body shape is crucial to how you put an outfit together! Normally I break it down into 5 body types and there’s a lot of info around each one, however if you follow these two points, you can’t go wrong. Firstly, if you’d rather camouflage a certain area of your body, avoid detail in that area (this includes prints, ruffles, frills, bows, shiny fabric, bold colours, jewellery and anything that draws attention) and do not try and ‘hide’ it by adding more fabric. The best way to make your arms invisible by the way, is to wear skin-tight sleeves or go sleeveless – otherwise all you will do is add bulk (yes really!). The second point here is highlight your favourite body parts with colour, detail and structured clothes rather than flowing ones. For example, if you have great legs, put on a pair of skinny or straight trousers, don’t suffocate them in those wide leg pants your Mum bought you because she thought they looked ‘nice’ on you. Case in point – use detail to draw attention to the right areas and keep detail to a minimum on areas you’d rather disappeared.
- Invest in the Basics
Ever find yourself wearing 20% of your wardrobe 80% of the time? Well you’re not alone! Those are the real-life statistics of how much we wear what’s in our wardrobe. So, let’s talk about that 20% for a minute. If you wear the same items again and again, they ought to be made of good quality fabric and be from reputable companies so that you get maximum mileage from your clothes. Buying something new every season because the old one ‘wore out’ contributes to the modern controversy of ‘fast fashion’ in our throwaway society. Again, it’s not about the label or how much you paid for something. My best pair of black pants we $60 from Sportsgirl! Honestly, I had a “what the?” moment the instant I tried them on in the changeroom, I just knew I had found ‘the one’! Looking back now, they were cheap because I can’t even begin to think how much wear I have had from them and when you break it down, it’d be even less than 50c per wear – bargain! Moral to the story: find good quality basics that you will wear all the time, and save in the long run.
- Complimentary Colouring
When you ice a cake, wrap a present or even put dinner together, don’t you consider your colour choices? Of course you do! Even if it’s unconsciously. We all know that using either complimentary colours, or wildly contrasting colours works in our creative efforts every day, so why is your wardrobe any different? In each colour consultation I work on enhancing the clients’ natural beauty and to do this at home yourself, I encourage you to take the time to look in the mirror, without makeup, with your hair pulled back, and without worrying about your supposed imperfections. Get naked, wrap a towel around yourself and have a good look at the women staring back at you in the mirror. Does she have visibly blue veins, or green veins under the skin? Can she wear blue based red lipstick? Or would orange reds be more flattering? Does silver jewellery highlight her skin and her eyes, or does gold bring out the best in her? Use the answers to determine if you are a cool or a warm respectively and then take a look at your hair colour, makeup choices and clothing to see if you have picked out the right undertone. It’s best to do this in the morning and use as much natural light as possible for best results. However, it should be fairly clear that you are either a blue veined, blue/red lipstick, silver wearing siren, or a green veined, orange/red lipstick, gold wearing goddess. Whichever you are, there’s always more to learn, but I find if you get your undertone correct, you should never look washed out. Your right colours will make you look lively, energetic, youthful and radiant, especially through the face. In the industry, we call it the ‘spotlight effect’.
- Be Yourself
Fitting in is hard work. Why not throw away all the pressure and enjoy the comfort of being uniquely you? It’s so much easier. Enter my client, ‘Maree’ who has a love affair with rockabilly style dresses, hair and makeup, but is disguised in a uniform during the week where she feels like ‘just another number’ in a male dominated industry. So, I encouraged her to embrace who she really is and carry that across to her work life, hoping to make her feel happier and more confident day to day. A couple of months later, she’s wearing little ice cream sundae earrings, rocking her cat wing eyeliner, and has her hair styled up in a ‘do’ for work each day. Her posture has picked up and she’s now more confident than ever. Her sales have increased as a result and people love to strike up a conversation with her about her great style.
Maree is unlike anyone else. Our uniqueness is what makes us all so interesting and it is the reason why you should always be content to acknowledge that it’s okay to be different. It is 100% okay to dress in a way that expresses who you are and flatters your natural beauty because that’s where the real glow comes from; confidence. So own it.
