If you’ve trolled through some of my other colleague’s postings, you may have noticed that a few of us were fortunate enough to attend an international PR conference in London last week.  And while the featured speakers and workshops have sparked lots of ideas for future musings about the state of the PR industry, my inaugural post will centre on another form of communication – one that helps us all form impressions and opinions prior to a single word being uttered or exchanged.

Dress.  Office attire.  What you wear.

Despite my wife’s best efforts, I’m willingly stuck (for the most part) in a Levi’s induced business casual time warp of sorts. Make no mistake, I used to throw on suits and ties on meeting days, but somewhere around four or five years ago I recall getting chided for being a “stiff” when visiting certain tech clients. Now, I’m biz cas at best on weekdays, and happily find that I’m speaking the same dress language as many of my client contacts.   

So imagine my horror when I discover (read: it was pointed out to me) that business attire was the requisite dress for the PR conference.  Knowing that Brits are flash dressers, I made a beeline to Harry’s where Alessandro fitted me up with a couple new suits, some shirts, and a few ties. And while I like to think that I clean up nicely (and even garnered a few compliments from my traveling companions), I couldn’t help but draw a mental comparison to how some attendees were dressed at the mesh conference a few weeks earlier – where casual was the preferred flavor and  I felt “overdressed” at times in a sports jacket. 

So, do clothes really make the man?  Recognizing this is a rather broad and sweeping remark, my personal conclusion is no. At both mesh and the World Public Relations Conference and Festival I was hanging on presenters’ words, not fixating on their dress.

Still, is “dress for success” a mantra to follow in the 21^st century mid-size office environment?  Somewhat begrudgingly, I think it has to be. And while I can think of a couple of recent new business pitches where both the CEO and GM (of established, if not blue chip, companies) were each sporting jeans, I’m happy that the pitch team was dressed for business, not beers. Like it or not, it demonstrates effort and interest.

Do you think fashion, much like art, is a form of communication? Is a smart dresser bound to make a better first impression? My one man jury still totters back and forth, but it’s given me pause to at least consider the notion of stepping up the dress a little more often.