Clothes are a form of diplomacy. The right apparel is an emissary that conveys the message of the wearer. The burning question is can you trust the message?
“Clothes maketh the man,” so I am told. And apparently, “First appearances count.” Interesting ideas.
I was never one for dressing well. Wrinkles used to be par for the course, and keeping my shirt tucked in still eludes me. My clothes are ironed nowadays, though not by me. I object to standing over an ironing board, having had plenty of experience of getting the seam in the wrong place.
I now pay someone to do my ironing for me. She’s not very good at it, and I still have a certain amount of wrinkles, but at least it’s not me doing the ironing. That’s my concession to looking decent. Now on with the show...
Clothes are a form of diplomacy. The right apparel is an emissary that conveys the message of the wearer. The burning question is can you trust the message?
History is littered with well-dressed men and women, all of whom had a major impact on life as we know it. These were people who made an immediate good impression on those around them. They had to in order to be credible.
Consider the fact that at least one major fashion house got its first big break with an order for jackboots and snappy black form-fitting uniforms for an elite national security unit in the 1940s. Like any good diplomat, clothes can tell the most outrageous lies and still make them look good.
The first type of lie that clothes tell may be found in uniform. A uniform is supposed to demonstrate a specific role and the caliber of the individual who wears it. Senior legal professionals wear outrageous wigs. The medical profession is associated with white coats and stethoscopes. What police wear depends on the country.
All of these professions are supposed to ascribe to a high level of ethics, yet all of these professions have their examples of corruption, or the sort of ethics that would make even the most cynical televangelist, with a choir full of buxom eighteen year olds, think twice.
It’s not just solitary individuals in uniforms who can go wrong though: occasionally the entire profession can be corrupted. Witness the example of the fashion house and the jackboots.
The second lie can be found in the individual who adopts the clothing as a facade. After all, if ‘clothes maketh the man’, then recall the hundreds of stories that all feature a modestly dressed priest, a missing ring and the inevitable loss of money on the part of some individual possessing equally large measures of gullibility and greed.
The third lie, the lie that arises from omission, is found in the people who propagate the idea that clothing is the key indicator of a man or woman’s personality. Perhaps all is not so well if there is no need to look any deeper than the surface.
A new dress code is emerging. Across the world, people are discarding suits and ties in favour of casual slacks and cotton shirts. The underpinning is an honest desire to be comfortable and seen outside of the camouflage of a uniform or a suit. Yet even apparently casual attire does not always speak of homespun honesty and the values that come from the rural setting which many of the labels seek to emulate: it’s the cosmopolitan approach to prices that gives the thing away.
The problem with ‘clothes that maketh the man’ is that the approach builds a stereotype. It’s not the sort of stereotype that says ‘my colour good, every other colour bad’, but it still deludes us and leads us away from the true worth of an individual.
There are exceptions to the rule: Gandhi made do with a strategically placed loin cloth, and many great minds appear to have difficulty telling a blue sock from a pink one.
Perhaps the best strategy in determining a first impression based on clothes is not immediately to admire, but to ask. “Why on earth did you wear that?”
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