This isn’t meant to be a brag or anything – I’m just really excited! I just had another “nicest kind of weird” experience – a question/comment I left on someone’s blog inspired an entire post!
A couple of weeks ago, Susan Wagner discussed what’s appropriate to wear to a job interview in a less-traditional work environment (business casual or “Friday casual”) in her “Working Closet” blog on Work It, Mom! In my comment, I asked what she’d suggest for an office that’s more of a “mix,” which pretty much describes my own; the women tend to dress in a more business-casual manner, but the men are pretty traditional, including my boss, the CFO (who happens to be younger than I am, for whatever that’s worth).
Today, I found that Susan has addressed that question with an entire post, and opens it by quoting my original question. Her recommendations go along with the traditional advice to “dress for the job you want, and not the one you have,” and she’s in favor of having designated “work clothes” that you don’t wear for anything else.
She was also intrigued be the style differences in my office falling along gender lines, and how that might be a reflection of gender politics and differences in male/female roles. I have to admit I hadn’t thought in those terms so much. The men have tended to be more traditional dressers in every office I’ve worked at (well, not the zoo, but that was just different all around), but this has also tended to correspond with positions on the org chart in that even the women in manager/director roles have tended to dress more casually unless they had a meeting or other function requiring a suit. Susan wonders if this could be because women are more likely to dress for the multitasking that we do, and men compartmentalize more. She also makes some really good points about how presentation shapes perceptions, and how this might be especially important to manage in an office without a specifically defined dress code.
Susan blogs on fashion and style in several places, and I really like her approach and advice – she’s a realist, and I’ve been linking to her on my blogroll for awhile now – way before this happened!
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. It is always great pleasure to read your posts.