Winning People by Dressing Smart

Written by: Daniel Richard

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Image courtesy of The Daniel Richard

This post is part of a new series of entries under the category of “Winning People“, where I’d be sharing practical steps and approaches I personally take for winning and connecting with people.

“Look at his dressing! It’s nice!”

“Hey! Nice jacket!”

“Wow! Looking great there!”

These are what you will get to hear from your friends (and even strangers who comes up to you randomly on the streets) when you dress smart.

That’s me in the photo.

And that’s the jacket that had helped me receive many of praises from almost everywhere (thanks David for choosing it for me)!

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. - Mark Twain

Clothes Adds to Your Confidence

Read that again. Clothes adds to your confidence.

They add to the confidence that you already possess all along.

The clothes you wear brings out the glory from inside of you.

Clothes enhance and increases your posture, stance, and appearance with a form of multiplier effect.

If you are already confident in your walk, the clothes will multiply everything else from you and make you larger than life.

If you don’t have any hint of self-confidence and faith in the first place, zero multiplied by anything positive is still going to be a zero.

Create Your Signature Style

Super-heroes and titular characters from popular culture have one thing in common: They have their own individual signature style.

Superman wears red and blue and made the two colors to be one of the most prominent costume that inspired people and many other comic characters (like Spiderman, Captain America, and Super Mario) to follow suit using the same bold red and patriotic blue.

Darker-themed hero characters like Batman, X-Men (live-action movies), and Matrix’s Neo wear black to perfection. Every thread and stitches differs between one another and yet they stood out on their own.

More modern day popular icons such as L (from Death Note series) wears simple themed clothes that are almost easily bought from the nearest shopping mall (white long sleeved t-shirt, and a pair of cool looking jeans with simple canvas shoes).

Another example of a modern day icon who wears clothes that are also easily available (though at a much higher priced range) would be James Bond with his wide range of designer label suits and tuxedos.

Yet these two well loved heroes are able to wear them in such a way that adds on to their colorful individualistic characters and made it a part of them. They made that style tightly related to them.

My signature style is having that brown jacket on, paired with my brown colored shoes, faded green jeans, and a normal t-shirt beneath the jacket (or coat).

What’s yours?

The soul of this man is in his clothes. - William Shakespeare

Dressing Smart for That First Impression

First impression counts.

We may not know this but the first impression this post is referring to is more broad based.

When you step out onto the streets, you are representing yourself to the rest of the people who will walk by you, or walk past you. The places where people may take a second of their time off to have a quick glance around and look at cool stuffs, the latest fashion, and appreciate the aesthetics around them. That’s the first impression that I am talking about.

Those first impression may lead to a subliminal image capture of you in their minds where in the most unexpected situations where you may be in your next job interview where both the human resource manager and you had crossed paths before somewhere not too long ago. She remembers out of nowhere of how you presented yourself in public with the way you dress up during that first impression.

Not being too self-conscious from here, but that “hey I remember you” phrase can bring shivers to some.

However, that phrase can also be something great for you when your confidence is intact and had presented yourself well by dressing smart.

4 Tips to Dress Smart Immediately!

Let me leave with you four practical and small tips to dress smart, and that you can implement them immediately after reading this!

1. Iron your clothes

Especially your shirt. A well pressed shirt and jacket can do wonders!

They make you look sharper, straighter, smarter, neat and clean.

Keeping your clothes well pressed will keep you from looking hard pressed. - Coleman Cox

The same goes for grunge styled t-shirts, with tattoo inspired designs printed on them. An iron straightened t-shirt can make the colors look brighter as the t-shirt without wrinkles brings out the fullness and richness of the color that flows beautifully with the design.

I made that last paragraph up. It makes sense though, as wrinkles and crumples do distract the viewers and lose the interest from looking at the design as a whole.

2. Get a few range of colored clothes

That you can mix and match a few t-shirt, polo tees, or casual-formal top colors with your jeans or business pants.

You might finally find that signature color theme that you can wear and make it associated with you.

Try bold orange, pink, pastel yellow, or grunge green if you have not seen yourself in them before.

It is good to try out every now and then some new tops.

I remembered once I decided to buy a new pink polo tee to wear just to meet a new friend and cheer her up.

That very week she accepted Christ and her life changed thanks to the boldness to try a new color to win someone by turning their day around.

3. Pay a bit more, but invest within your means

Apart from that full suit meant for the next wedding invitation or formal functions, spend within your own monthly budget for that next set of clothes.

The costs for the clothes featured in that photograph of me above are as followed:

• Jacket - S$35.00
• T-shirt - S$45.00
• Jeans - S$55.00
• Belt - S$24.00
• Shoes - S$110.00

Take note that all of the items are bought within a stretch of a few months.

That means that it was after many months that I can get a signature style to call my own which receives well responses from many people and friends.

4. Get a good pair of shoes

I remembered that there was once when I was still new in my church. I was in a hurry and wore slippers to the service.

As the seats around the terraces and those further to the back were already filled, the ushers guided me to the next available seat, and that was at the third row from the front, one more row forward would be the pastors’ row.

The live-camera was sharp enough to capture the place where I was seated at from its angle, and especially easier as I was seated along the aisle.

After that day where I kept trying to hide my feet from being shown on the screen, I told that story to my friend. And this was what he replied. “Wear shoes next time!”

That incident was near to 5 years ago.

Now I wear easy slip on brown colored leather shoes during main events and on weekends - or whenever I am out to meet people.

My senior pastor inspired me to get a good pair of shoes, more so a leather pair that can be polished.

His shoes were almost always shiny and prominently stood out! Sometimes my discussions with some of my friends would be about our pastor’s shoes and we talked about how long we think he takes to polish his shoes, and how we had to polish our own drill boots during our national service days, coming up with names for our own techniques of getting the most impressive mirror shine we can ever get even for normal days.

Sometimes, our shoes will be the first thing that our friends will notice - with our confidence heard first through the footsteps when we walk.

Let our shoes be a good pair, cool pair, and a shiny pair!

Now that we’ve covered almost our entire outward appearance from neck down to the shoes on our feet, the next thing we will be sharing about in this Winning People by series will be how we can win people with our countenance.

Do keep looking forward here for the next part of the series alongside the many other updates that comes regularly in Winning Everyone!

Let us start dressing smarter. You will look great!

Great people dress smart! Subscribe today cos’ you are cool!

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