“The apparel oft proclaims the man”
– William Shakespeare
I threw a random comment in the office sometime last week about a certain Kenyan celebrity’s taste in dressing to be “not with it” despite her affluent background. From what to me was initially an “innocent comment”, it ended up being a burst of argument about fashion, style and generally………dressing!
Try dressing like this and go to the office…
In different eras in the history of man, we have been known to dress differently, men dressed in elaborate robes at some point, the Scotts dressed in kilts (and some still do), if you believe in the Christian story of creation, man used to be naked as he went around his business – then the woman was created…I think she just couldn’t handle all the masculinity, it overwhelmed her and well you know the rest of the story. Africans tried to pick up where Adam and Eve initially left off before “the meal”, with the nudity thing but Europeans came round telling us that that was the work of the Devil and we should shun nudity – damn it! Why were we so gullible? Just think about it, with our women looking as beautiful as they have always and the “Mandingo” warrior being around, the other name for Africa would be Heaven.
Sorry, I’m getting carried away by images…and losing track (who wouldn’t), but just imagine a nude, masculine, well chiseled, muscle rippling body like……(fill in the blanks, 20 marks). Focus woman, focus!!!
What does the way we dress reveal about us as individuals?
But like the question in the beginning asks, what does the culture of dressing reveal about us? I was in a bank the other day and a thought crossed my mind, say Mr. Big has loads of money e.g. Kshs 5 million that he would like to invest in a worthy business venture. Now there are two investment brokers, X and Y, Y is dressed in a pair of jeans and a really good looking t-shirt, whereas X is in a suit from Brooks Brothers. Now the question is, why do you think Mr. Big will give his money to X? Presentation? I know at the end of the day, presentation is important but should it be everything or a large percentage of what determines a persons’ decision?
I think, in this day and age dressing shouldn’t be put on such a high pedestal as to be able to decide whether world war 3 will start or not, it’s just not enough. A human resources person will tell you that the best way to get positive results out of your staff isn’t to continuously push them around but to encourage them, create an environment where productivity, efficiency as well as creativity thrive and one of the ways to achieve this is to let the staff be able to express themselves adequately and as much as this might be done through clothing one needs to be able to balance this properly. If I feel that I achieve productivity best when I’m in jeans and a t-shirt then my manager needs to find a way to keep me happy. I like the American style of management where as long as one is productive and fulfilling or even surpassing their responsibilities, then dressing shouldn’t be held in such high regard. As long as I’m clean, presentable, and not naked, I think that should be good enough.
Back to the example of Mr. Big, he could give his money to broker X, who could turn out to be a fraudster, so what does dressing speak of us? The suit just says that he probably has good taste in clothing. You also need to understand that the dressing needs to be within reason. If I was a man who worked in a bank, I can’t go to work without a tie. It would probably cost me my job if it was happening for the third time in a row, despite me being employee of the month three months in a row. So in finality, management would rather lose a very hard working employee just because of one piece of attire. Like I say we are putting too much emphasis on the wrong things.
The magic words mentioned above I think are ‘within reason’. It’s ok for a lady to have dreadlocks and be a management executive but not a man in the same tier of management. As quoted in the beginning, that is more often than not the case but not in totality. Let us be careful and not let opportunities slip us by just because we choose to wear blinders. The decisions that we make in life should be supported by facts as much as possible and not just whimsical feelings that we get at the particular time of deciding.
Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
– Mark Twain
MBC
mybrokecompass 