Why You Should Dress Well (Hint: it Can Make You Smarter)

Why Do You Need Style?

Clothes and style are shallow. They are unimportant. Appearance shouldn’t matter as it’s what’s inside that counts right?

We have to get past the outside to get to the inside and find out what a great personality you have, how smart you are and discover your integrity and value.

If you think what you wear has no effect on how you think, then think again, as studies have proved the exact opposite.

What You Wear Impacts How Smart You Are

In a study done by Dr Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University where participants were given a white lab coat to wear, then asked to perform a test for selective attention (the ability to sustain attention on a task over a period of time). Half the participants were told they were wearing a doctors coat, the other half a painters coat. The result? Those who thought they were wearing a doctor’s coat performed twice as well as those who were wearing the painter’s coat.

This ability to influence how you perform and feel in clothing has been called “enclothed cognition” is showing that what you wear can and does, change your life.

I’ve seen this in action, take someone who has been wearing loose active-wear and put them in a smart suit and their entire body language changes, they straighten up and become more confident within seconds.

Watching the amazing women who participate in my Evolve Your Style challenge on day 1 compared to day 30 and you see their confidence growing as the days roll by.

Think about how you feel when you’re dressed up in your favourite outfit, hair done, ready to go. You feel good right?

Now think about how you feel when you’re dressed in your worst clothes, when you’ve not bothered to do any grooming? You catch sight of yourself in the bathroom mirror and you get that sinking feeling and it can shift your mood for the worse.

Why You Should Dress Well

Not only do studies show that what you wear changes how you think and feel, research over the past decade at Princeton University by Professor Alexander Todorov has shown that a first impression takes less than 1/10th of a second to make! How others perceive you is decided in the blink of an eye, and that’s well before you’ve had the time to get a word out of your mouth. Whether you are more or less trustworthy or competent is judged on how you appear.

So the next time you worry that spending time understanding what suits you, who you are and how you want to present yourself to the world is shallow, think again, as in fact you are doing something that is very important and has an impact on your life, psyche and potential opportunities.

What is fabulous is that you have the power to change people’s perception of you. The clothes you choose to wear, the way you groom and whether or not you choose to smile are all within your control.

This doesn’t mean you have to dress up in suits or really formal clothes all the time. Just that whatever you wear looks well put-together, fits, flatters and is appropriate for the situation.

Your clothes represent your inner motivations and feelings and this forms a feedback loop in your brain. So when you wear clothes that make you look good, you also feel good.

We are very visual beings, our brains have developed to take in visual messages and clues very quickly to help us survive and thrive over the millennia and this is why you need style.