IQ TEST - Episode 210

So this is something that's funny to me.

Here's a story.

I want to upgrade my order droves,

so I'm going through the motions of doing that now.

I dress for success.

Those of you who follow my style blog,

you understand if you're on the stylist,

you understand how I think about clothes,

and it's morphed, it's evolved.

I recognize dressing for success isn't

necessarily looking like a GQ model.

Let me explain.

So I go to buy a white dress shirt.

I want it in the classic setup,

which is 60, 40 polyester cotton blend.

So the cuffs have to be a certain way.

Fabric has to be a certain way.

The collar has to be a certain way.

Now back in the day, you go into the store, you buy a shirt,

and you can still do that.

You can walk into a JCPenney in the US

and grab a van using shirt,

and it more or less fits when I just describe.

Although, yeah, the blend is slightly different.

Everything else is cool.

So I found that interesting.

It's like, oh, I can't just get the shirt

that I want to actually have to dig and search for it.

Sure enough, it's available on Amazon.

So that's cool.

Didn't think too much of it besides the slight inconvenience,

especially since Amazon doesn't like me shopping

on their site, and they've banned me.

It is silly the things that limit you.

Anyway, we go to the next item, which is,

all right, let me get socks.

Socks were hard to find.

So again, I'm going for that classic professional look

where you're wearing nylon or like or socks,

calf-eye, they stick to you all day, no matter what.

They don't become unloose.

They hold their shape and their firm,

which means you're not distracted by them falling off on you,

and yeah, you get them installed black in your set.

So they don't stick to your suits

or your trousers, whatever you're wearing.

They are just isolated.

So it doesn't change the drape,

it doesn't change the way that you look on the outside

and you feel comfortable wearing it on the inside of your clothes.

Couldn't find it, but it is available on Amazon.

So I bought a whole lot.

So how did it go?

It's the same story.

I'm not able to find, walk into a store

and find the things that I want.

I wanted a five-hole belt.

That's how belts are meant to be made.

Six, seven, eight holes.

And it's like, okay, a sign of the times.

People are bigger, perhaps,

and more of what we're trying to help people

by making them feel flattered about themselves.

So we give them options that suit their psyche,

but don't necessarily suit their ambition.

Because dressing first success began as a professional matter.

You dressed so that you were taken seriously at work,

which meant that you got the raise, you got the promotion,

you got the job offers from outside the business.

Why?

Because you looked the part and then under further vetting,

you actually could play to the part

so you were considered reliable.

This is why I dress this way.

If I walk into a place, dress a certain way,

even though it may seem out of place in the modern times,

even though it may seem kind of boring,

which it actually isn't, it's clean, it's sharp,

and it sends a message, I'm not here to fuck around,

but I will fuck things up for my team.

And as well as demonstrates that I'm discreet,

I'm not loud, I'm not boastful,

I'm focused on what matters,

which is why I don't obsess over my clothes.

I just get the right things

and I put them on without thinking twice

so I can get to work.

Another component of this is that

dressing for success means I'm not distracting people

who see me.

I may not fit in, but I'm not a distraction.

Because when you see me, you see that I'm put together

so you think less of what I'm wearing

and you focus more on who I am,

what I'm saying, my eye contact,

which again explains why people dress the way

that they do for covering up insecurities.

But the thing is in covering up insecurities,

the choices we make reveal and amplify those insecurities.

Now the average person may not be aware of these things

until we point it out.

So for instance, I'm dealing with a guy,

he tells me that he likes to wear his shirts untucked.

I'm like, oh, that's great.

And it's an open conversation.

So he's asking for advice and I said,

well, when I see a man with an untuck shirt

that is designed to be tucked, I realize,

oh, okay, there's an insecurity there.

He's compensating for something.

And I just said, point blank is that

the response that I got was something about his butt,

he doesn't like the way his butt looks underdeveloped.

I forgot what we're to use.

And sure enough, it reveals what I said.

He is concerned about hiding something.

So he dresses a certain way to hide it,

which isn't doing him any favors.

And because of that, whether he knows it or not,

people in the know dismiss him.

This happens so many times a day.

Women are especially adept at this.

They're looking at your shoes, they're looking at your belt.

They're looking how you put the outfit together.

They're looking at the proportions and the symmetry.

Is he wearing bold patterns and being loud?

Or is he subtle yet sharp?

A great way to think about this is a difference

between being tasteful and trendy.

Does he look like a GQ model or does he look like

a classic film actor?

It goes back and forth with men and women,

but I only understand male dress.

Women, I guess, get away with doing so much,

that I stay away from that at this point of my life.

I used to be like Kanye was, dressing up my girls,

like Barbie's, no more.

Just not interested.

So I bring this all up because there's so many things

from the past that has been done.

There's so many things from the past that had function

and utility that are no longer understood

because those lessons weren't passed down.

So as I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about my career

and how well it's taken off, especially in recent 18 months.

I notice a lot of it is because of these choices that I'm making.

And then I think about the bigger picture I'm extrapolating.

And I recognize the unemployment rate is what it is

because people don't know these unwritten rules.

They're not dressing appropriately.

You're not going to get the raise or the promotion

if you're dressed like someone who doesn't book long

at that company at a high level.

Dress like the executives without outshining them.

So that is an unwritten rule that you cannot break

because when you break unwritten rules,

you're dismissed, ignored, exiled, excommunicated.

But you're not necessarily told so.

So you can work at a company for years, not rising up.

And you think that you're doing everything right.

You're smart, but it has nothing to do with intelligence.

It's, do you look the part?

And the answer is you don't.

Now you go further across all social platforms

and you recognize, oh, this is why politics are the way they are.

This is why certain people are given opportunities.

This is why people aren't dating at the level that they want

because they're not matching with the right people.

They're not dressing for success in those arenas.

So now I'm thinking, oh, a lot of life,

a lot of the universe's humanitarian concerns

are really just ignorance being exploited

and people missing out on things that are fantastic.

All this to say, our sense of dress

seems nearly faded away.

Very few people like myself know what the rules are

and how to dress, went to break those rules

and why those rules exist in the first place.

And this is in mainstream.

GQ has won the battle.

And GQ is run by people who have no stake

in professional careers outside of their own.

So they're not telling you to dress for your boss

and get a raise in your promotion.

And you had a dress to get a date, get laid, get married,

have kids, you had a dress to impress your peers

and your peers aren't the ones giving you the opportunities.

It's the people typically ahead of you, your mentors.

Something to think about.

So the way you dress is the IQ test.

That's how I'm seeing you

and that's how everyone sees you.

And whether or not they think good things of you

will be determined by the gifts that they give you.

And if you're not getting too many gifts, you know you feel them.