Do you ever wonder where all the dress rules have gone? Depending on when and where you are on any given business day, the words distant past might come to mind. It’s difficult to decide if people don’t know what to wear to work or if they have lost sight of the relevance of appearance to professional success.

The Queen of England is reported to have told Prince Charles, Dress gives one the outward sign from which people can judge the inward state of mind. One they can see, the other they cannot. Clearly, she was saying what many people are reluctant to accept; that people judge us by the way we dress. In all situations, business and social, our outward appearance sends a message.

Try going to a busy restaurant at lunchtime. Look around you at what people are wearing and see if you don’t make judgments about who they are, their line of business, their personalities and their competencies. Think about how you feel when you are dressed in your usual business attire as opposed to casual dress. Your choice of business apparel speaks to your professional behavior and credibility. It is important to understand how to dress for business if you wish to promote yourself and your organization in a positive manner,

How you dress depends on four factors: the industry in which you work, the job you have within that industry, the geographic area in which you live; and most importantly, what your client expects to see.

Professional Dress for Men

In men’s clothing, fashion does not change significantly from season to season but business attire is about being professional and not about being fashionable. It’s about presenting yourself in a way that makes your clients feel comfortable and confident with you. Dressing for success is still the rule. The professional businessman should keep in mind these few points when deciding what to wear to work.

Choose a conservative suit in navy, black or gray either pinstripe or solid. The quality of the material speaks as loudly as the color and can make the difference between sleaze and suave.

A solid white or blue dress shirt with long sleeves offers the most polished look. The more pattern and color you add, the more the focus is on your clothing, rather than your professionalism.

Ties should be made of silk or a silk-like fabric. Avoid the cartoon characters and go for simple and subtle if you want to enhance your credibility.

Socks should be calf-length or above. Make sure they match not only what you are wearing, but also each other. A quick glance in good light before heading out the door can save embarrassment later in the day. Check for holes as well if you’ll be going through airport security and removing your shoes.

Shoes should without question be conservative, clean and well polished. Lace-up shoes are the choice over slip-ons or flip flops. Don’t think for a minute that people don’t notice shoes. Many people will look at your feet before your face.

Belts need to match or closely coordinate with your shoes. Once again, quality counts.

Keep jewelry to a minimum. In a time when men sport gold necklaces, bracelets and earrings, the business professional should limit himself to a conservative watch, a wedding band and maybe his college ring.

Personal hygiene is part of the success equation. Freshly scrubbed wins out over heavily fragranced any day of the week. Save the after-shave for after hours, but never the shave itself.

The finishing touch for the business man is his choice of accessories: briefcase, portfolio and pen. When it comes to sealing the deal, a top of the line suit, a silk tie and a good pair of leather shoes can lose their affect when you pull out the ball point pen you picked up in the hotel meeting room the day before.

Professional Dress for Women

When women entered the workplace in the 1970’s and 1980’s in greater numbers than ever before and began to move into positions which had traditionally been held by men, many of them believed that they needed to imitate male business attire. The result was women showing up at the office in skirted suits or coordinated skirts and jackets with tailored blouses finished off with an accessory item that looked very much like a man’s tie. Happily those days are gone. While the business woman may now wear trousers to work, she does it out of a desire to appear professional and at the same time enjoy the flexibility and comfort that pants offer over skirts. Her goal is no longer to mirror her male colleagues.

The same overall rules apply to women’s work attire as apply to men’s. Business clothing is not a reflection of the latest fashion trend. A woman should be noticed for who she is and her professional skills rather than for what she wears. Her business wear should be appropriate for her industry and her position or title within the industry.

Start with a skirted suit or pants suit for the most conservative look. A skirted suit is the most professional. With a few exceptions, dresses do not offer the same credibility unless they are accompanied by matching jackets.

Skirts should be knee-length or slightly above or below. Avoid extremes. A skirt more than two inches above the knee raises eyebrows and questions.

Pants should break at the top of the foot or shoe. While Capri pants and their fashion cousins that come in assorted lengths from mid-calf to ankle are the latest trend, they are out of place in the conservative business environment.

Blouses and sweaters provide color and variety to woman’s clothing, but they should be appealing rather than revealing. Inappropriate necklines and waistlines can give the wrong impression.

Women need to wear hose in the business world. Neutral or flesh-tone stockings are the best choices. Never wear dark hose with light-colored clothing or shoes. Keep an extra pair of stockings in your desk drawer unless the hosiery store is next door or just down the street from the office.

Faces, not feet, should be the focal point in business so chose conservative shoes. A low heel is more professional than flats or high heels. In spite of current fashion and the sandal rage, open-toed or backless shoes are not office attire. Not only are sandals a safety hazard, they suggest a certain official agenda.

When it comes to accessories and jewelry, less is once again more. Keep it simple: one ring per hand, one earring per ear. Accessories should reflect your personality, not diminish your credibility.

Business attire is different from weekend and evening wear. Investing in a good business wardrobe is an investment in your professional future. For those who think it’s not what you wear but who you are that creates success, give that some more thought. Business skills and experience count, but so does personal appearance and that all-important first impression.

2005, Lydia Ramsey. All rights in all media reserved.

Lydia Ramsey is a business etiquette expert, professional speaker, corporate trainer and author of MANNERS THAT SELL - ADDING THE POLISH THAT BUILDS PROFITS. She has been quoted or featured in The New York Times, Investors’ Business Daily, Entrepreneur, Inc., Real Simple and Woman’s Day. For more information about her programs, products and services, e-mail her at lydia@mannersthatsell.com or visit her web site http://www.mannersthatsell.com

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When you get ready for a dinner, or to go out with your friends do you spend hours in front of the wardrobe searching for something to wear?

Is your closet brimming with clothes yet somehow, you still have nothing suitable for the occasion?

You are not alone.

It simply means that it is time to reorganize your wardrobe.

Put it simply, what you don’t see, you probably wouldn’t wear. Chances are, the perfect outfit for the occasion is hiding somewhere in your closet. You just don’t see it. Looking for it is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

First, prepare yourself to be brutal. Set aside an entire afternoon (or day) for your wardrobe spring cleaning. (or winter cleaning, whatever)

Keep only what you will wear and throw out everything else. I mean it.

First, go through everything to see if it still fits you. If the item fits, put it in the keep pile. If it doesn’t, put it in the discard pile.

Now go through the keep pile. Is anything there really out of fashion? Don’t wait for it to get back in fashion. If that look every comes back, you can buy a new, more updated version. Put all these outdated item in the discard pile.

If you are broke, you can sell the items in the discard pile on ebay. If you want help the needy, you could donate the clothes to a worthy charity. If you like second hand clothes, you could hold a clothes swap session where you exchange these clothes with your pals for something you would probablly wear.

Now that you have significantly pared down your keep pile, time to sort it out. What are the items not appropriate for the current season. Fold these up nicely and store them in drawers lined with scented paper so they will smell fresh when the season is right for them.

Iron the clothes you have left in your keep pile. Sort them by type of clothing and color and prepare to keep them in your closet. Do the same for your bags, shoes and the rest of your accessories.

Organize your wardrobe. Make it really easy to find what you want at a glance. Get some closet organizers to help you make full use of the space of your wardrobe and to organize your stuff so you know where to find what you want when you want it.

Pack your keep clothes and accessories back into the closet, sorted by color, type and function so you can find what you want at a glance.

Take stock of your wardrobe. Do you really have nothing to wear?

Look at your daily schedule. Do you have clothes that will carry you through all the events in your daily schedules? Write down the events that you really don’t have anything to wear to.

Look through your appointments. Do you have something to wear for every one of these appointments? For every one of these functions? Take note of the functions or appointments which you need to buy clothes for.

Now go through all the events where you probably would not have anything to wear. What are the items that could take you through these events? List them down. Then go and shop for them.

You can find the clothes you really need at http://www.buyclothing.net and some gorgeous shoes at http://www.shoes-mall.net.

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A Chinese art of Feng Shui counts 6000 years - as a tradition, it includes knowledge of architecture, aesthetics, astrology, geodesy and bio-energy. In metaphrase, Feng Shui means: water wind. These are 2 main elements, including basic living processes of Earth. Feng Shui is very extensive, it brings information almost about everything: beginning from the moment of building a house and finishing with reading the smallest features of destiny. Feng Shui knowledge is based on the irrational, apparently, because it seems to be illogical, mysterious, but surprisingly exact. An eastern sage Osho said once: Logic is a small island in an ocean of irrational. Feng Shui knows laws of irrational.

Tracing the connection between Feng Shui and fashion, one can notice with surprise, that fashion is also irrational, lives according to its own strange laws, but has its own exact rules and cycles.

In China, number 64 is considered to be very strong, in magic plan. 64 years is a cycle of fashion! There are also additional cycles, for example 64:2= 32. If you look back in the history of fashion 32 years ago, you will discover that bell-bottomed jeans, hairdos and make-up, like we wear now, were in fashion at that time.

In principle, fashion remains to be firm, but keeps up to date. Cloth and accessories are a continuation of a man, his personality. Your cloth helps other people to treat you in a certain way, for example, people have one approach to a monk and absolutely different attitude to a policeman, as their cloth says everything for them. What can we say about such popular cloth, like jeans and why do we still wear them, since Levise times (18th century!)? Because blue color is a color of sky, color of ordaining, when one puts them on his buttocks, he profanes traditions of ordaining, blockades his contact with Space. Jeans were invented to be working cloth for commoners and remain such till now, blocking ones way to personality perfection. Ideas of cliquishness and ordaining are actual! Rank and fashion keeps on wearing black tails and long white dresses, in spite of all.

Well, as for color: Feng Shui differs only 5 colors of Space: white, black, red, green and yellow, they are considered to be basic parts of the Universe. How does this work in life? In childrens books fairies are pictured in white, and bad malicious witches are pictured in black. These two colors represent the duality of world, power, struggle of good and evil, but in Chinese traditions Yin-Yang (white-black) are interconnected, they penetrate into each other, not mixing with each other. This way it is impossible to understand good without trying evil. These are colors of ordaining ( in rank and fashion these are white dresses and black suits, wedding traditions, special ceremonies). When a man wants to accentuate the importance of some events, he uses these colors. Black color is popular to accentuate ones power, individuality this is a color of a master (black karate belt, black monk habit) and surpasses, in point of fact, all other colors, but when mixed with strong white color, it gives birth to grey color (quite popular among high life).

As a rule, grey color means also steel-blue, platinum or silvery gleam, the colors, that are so popular in high life. Metallic lustre symbolizes money, power, strength and platinum items or white gold, popular now, - are not only a tribute to fashion, but also to your social status.

In Arabian world, classical cloth for women is black, for men white another confirmation of the fact of confrontation between Yin and Yang. Red color is a deserving opponent to black, realizing this fact, they represent quite a strong contrast pair in cloth this sounds martially and glaringly, like saying I am very strong! Shy, introverted people, wishing to show themselves in a society, should include such combination in their wardrobe. Red is a color of aggression, active living position. American democrats, who wish to accentuate this nuance, like to put on red cravats. Red lipstick in a womans make-up is an irreplaceable attribute of accentuated sexuality, which has a man-like shade. This is an image of a feminist that does not hide her imperious intentions. Red color is always stronger than white one, and in a historical war of red and white roses, civil war of Russians, red always won Lady in red is a desired type of woman in mans subconsciousness.

As for yellow color color of Earth, it is sedative in psychological concept, it corresponds to the processes that take place in earth depths. Yellow, like its continuation gravel, terracotta, beige is very good for everyday work, blends with collective aura, does not irritate, but accentuates good-temper in a personality. Green color harmonic, giving repose, is rather vivifying on associative level, as this is a color of grass, trees, which are servants and healers for us in hierarchic concept. This color suits excellently to people, who have problems with psychosomatic diseases and psychic disorders. Doctors noted long ago that wounds and stitches heal up better, if a patient looks on green color or is situated among big amount of green color. Army uses mimicry of nature, dressing soldiers in a uniform of khaki. Green contributes to surviving, adaptation to external conditions of environment, confluence with nature.

By the way, green, like pink (well dilute red) are colors of love, women, accumulating love in their organism and displaying it outside, should definitely use these colors in cloth and interior, as bunches of flowers symbolizing romantic feeling are nothing but combination of green leaves and pink buds. Accentuating the process of blossoming (gamma, pattern of fabric, accessories), a man gives birth to life itself around him

Using knowledge of Feng Shui, one can introduce positive energy, success and health. And the main fact is that our life is fantastical it is a combination of the most unexpected events and His Majesty Case constantly breaks the order and its evident logic. Every one of us feels this sensation from day to day. Once, in some inconceivable way, whirling of chances gains sense and finds its only point of rest love Chinese people say: you cannot change your destiny, but you can lighten your life significantly, considering rules of its game and knowledge. Realizing himself as a personality, a man should treat fashion trends carefully, especially standard trends that deprive a man of his personal character, he should wear only that cloth, which will accentuate his own individuality!

Yana Mikheeva is the creator of the WomansPassions site for women and about women at http://www.womanspassions.com, it is an on-line resource for women and about women. Here you can find articles on various subjects, such as: diets, receipts, health, cellulite, figure, aromatherapy, wholesome food, psychology of relationships, pregnancy, parenting, fashion and many others. She also has a blog for women at http://www.womanspassions.com/blog/

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