On Wearing a Suit

gerger.co

6 points·orhanturkoglu··6 comments

I never wear a suit. I know it counts against me with some people.... but I don't want to work with those people. I don't even wear suits to funerals or weddings. If people don't want me to come that's fine with me.

Life is too short to worry about these things.

I worry that you are loading too much meaning to a suit and might be undercutting yourself subconsciously. What does a suit represent to you?

Not wearing proper attire to weddings and especially to funerals might also hurt people's feeling who are close to the deceased or the happy couple. I don't mean that you have to wear a suit for these occasions at all but during these events a proper attire is a sign of care and compassion.

While it's true that it'll never work against you, it could fail to work -for- you. In that case, it has technically worked against you because you failed to realize the potential of the meeting because of it.

It all comes down to knowing yourself, your business, your clients, and your clients' businesses.

If you can't tell when to wear a suit or not, wear a suit. If you can tell, you don't need this advice.

Hi, the author here. I think the last sentence you wrote sums it all up in a nutshell. However, most people just take the risk and show up like cowboys in first time meetings.

I have also never seen anybody receive a negative remark for wearing a suit to a business meeting but I've seen the opposite often.

I've had people refuse to recognize that I was a technology person if I was wearing a suit since "only business people wear suits." That could be a issue if your role is to be recognized as a technical expert by people who might not be. It can be addressed in most situations, but it comes at an effort cost of overcoming expectations. People use variation in clothing as a queue for expectation.

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