So you’ve dressed for your day, communicating leadership and confidence, looking as good as you can despite the heat and your varied obligations. You have remembered to dress for the most formal appointment of your day, not for the most casual. You’re doing great.
Except that you’re wearing a crisp boat-neck French striped tee-shirt and white fitted skirt, wedge espadrilles and carrying a preppy bag –and you’ve flung a huge, old, fringey patterned Indian scarf about your shoulders to block yourself from a/c chill. What’s wrong with this picture?
It isn’t that you’re clashing — you are — but that’s not the worst problem, aesthetically jarring as it is. It isn’t even that your shawl is so big and wrinkled that it would make Audrey Hepburn herself look like a hot mess, although that’s a serious issue, too. The problem for our purposes today is that you’ve added a discordant note of Bohemian Goddess to what was otherwise a perfectly polished Suburban Professional look. And it doesn’t work. What it looks like to the observer is, “I forgot to prepare for air-conditioning so I stole this wrap out of my college-aged daughter’s car on my way to the station.”
Mixing genres is hard and takes a practiced hand. For most of us, it is important to keep our outfits and accessories consistent. Yes, we all know elegant ladies and gents who manage to add a bit of ethnic drama to an otherwise corporate look, but it’s hard to do. What usually winds up happening is that you project two (or three) images at once, telegraphing that you really aren’t sure who you are.
Also, pumpkins, accessories matter. You can undermine a whole carefully composed public image by adding on a drab, beat-up knapsack as an afterthought. You can walk into the room in a sports jacket and nice slacks as Impressive Presence and leave in your wrinkled anorak as Guy Who Is More Committed to Staying Dry Camping Than To Looking Like a Leader.
Some things that don’t work together genre-wise:
Woven macrame bags and suits.
Elegant pumps and batik sundresses.
Sports jackets, chinos and bolo ties.
Pencil skirts and hippie blouses.
Leather vests and … anything!
Trench coats and Birkenstocks.
Gypsy skirts and Oxford shirts.
Professional appointments and Crocs.
Sports jackets and Bermuda shorts, unless you’re actually in Bermuda working for the Episcopal diocese there.
Elegant trousers and tie-dye tees, unless you’re like, Kate Moss and know what you’re doing.
Any nominations of your own, my doves?
Ohhh… please, people, no hose with open-toed shoes or, heaven forbid, SANDALS. If you feel that you ought to be wearing hose, then get out your professional pumps. Put the sandals AWAY.
Thanks for mentioning crocs with work clothing. Folks, crocs are for gardening and camping. Not for work. Ever.
Is “plain, professional outfit” with “funky ethnic necklace like the one I wore to the blogger dinner” ok?
If not, I’m pretty sure I don’t have an outfit ethnic enough to wear it with.
CC
Is there anything my Kate Spade bag I carry everywhere wouldn’t work with?
(OK, aside from jogging suit and bathing suit, because I carry it when wearing pretty much everything else.)
Reebok hi-tops and fur coat? (I only mention this because I saw it once)
but seriously, my addition is this:
in the winter, dress coat and casual accessories.
it may seem like overkill, but fleece, goretex and/or chunky handknits do not go with the dressed professional look. leather or faux leather *gloves* and a dressy scarf–jeweltoned chenille, cut velvet or something nice. A nice pin is a good addition, too.
and one more thing,
just because it’s Burberry doesn’t make it a neutral. Some liberties can be taken in terms of mixing prints, but be *judicious* please.
My faves in this category:
Clericals, dress pants, and tevas
gardening clothes to clergy day
Clerical collared shirt with pink oxford stripes and white french cuffs (I don’t care if it is custom made)
anything “churched up” with a big wooden cross.
burberry headband with black clericals (raincoat is Ok, headband is not)
Burberry’s makes headbands?!
Oh, no way! You have clearly never seen my boot-tush Episcopal priest friend who was the youth minister… she’d go for a church picnic in a khaki skirt and her pink-striped (no cuffs) clergy shirt. I have another friend who has fabulous trousers and a pink striped shirt too, and she looks airy and professional (that one is Whippels).
White french cuffs, though, ick. And pink stripes on a man, perhaps not. It takes a Cute Chick to pull that one off…
Rev Bee of the Yellow Shirt.
How about black patent Ferragamo headband and black patent Dansko clogs with black slacks and clergy shirt? It’s kind of my standard Sunday attire…
I’ve never seen the white french cuffs on a women’s shirt, only on men’s. Remember the corporate banker look of the 80’s and 90’s? those shirts, with a collar.
The women’s pink shirts are tolerable, I guess, if you’re into that sort of thing. As I’ve indicated before it’s not mine. I tried it (different colors of clerical shirts) early on, and I didn’t like it for reasons both symbolic and stylistic.
The only people who should wear a plaid headband are adolescents. I know a few people who can pull off a headband as an adult, but it’s risky. Swim at your own risk.
What’s “boot-tush,” please?
Oh sweetie…. “a bit of ethnic drama” – not the most cross-cultural sensitive thing I’ve read this week. I do, occasionally wear my pashmina to work – it’s easily one of the most elegant things in my wardrobe, and I have a propensity for wearing black, black and more black – so it helps soften up my look.
But you know who wears large, patterned Indian shawls all the time? My girlfriend. Often she wears one of the ones her Bengali father brings her back from India. Does she look “ethnic”? Yes. Are you implying that’s unprofessional? I hope not.
Ethnic drama, PeaceBang style: wearing a brightly patterned babushka and big hoop earrings to work with a great, classic outfit. Wearing a Russian fur hat in the winter.
We’re all ethnic, hon. My ethnicity is Russian/Eastern European and New York Jew. Finding ethnic details that work for you and don’t look like you’re engaging in “Borrowed exoticism” is key.
“borrowed exoticism” – Ah, and there I completely agree with you.
Been reading for a few weeks, and really enjoying your writing. Especially when I disagree, because then I get to think it through.