How to Dress for Success

Edith Head, Joe Hyams

• Publisher: V&A Publishing
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781851775545
• eBook ISBN:
  9781851777426
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

Would you like to look younger, prettier, slimmer? Would you like to attract a new man, hold on to the current one? Would you like to get a better job, earn more money? Would you like your husband to move up the ladder of success, attract more friends? Then this is your book. Edith Head, Hollywood designer to the stars, offers no-nonsense and often hilarious fashion advice straight from the 1960s. There is still much to learn today from Head's witty style tips and delightful drawings.

1. How to Dress for Success in Business

Success in business means different things to different women. To some women and girls, their business lives are merely intervals between the time they leave school and the time they get married. To them a successful business career is a short one, leading not to the front office with a golden name on the door, but straight to the altar with a golden ring on the finger. If you are in this group, we devote the entire next chapter to you. But in the meantime we suggest you make the most of your success story at the office by reading this chapter too. Who knows, you might marry the boss!

GETTING THE JOB

Before you even select the first article of clothing involved, you have to know what kind of job you want. There are vast differences in the kinds of dressing desired (and required) by different kinds of business firms. In larger organizations where dependability, solidity and integrity overshadow glamor (for instance, banks, insurance companies, law offices or blue-chip industrial corporations) a far more conservative type of dressing is prevalent than in business offices of a more imaginative and creative bent (such as advertising, publishing, merchandising or the entertainment field).

To get the job you want in the field you feel best equipped for, spend some time finding out about it. Learn all you can about it by reading, asking questions, following the business notes in the daily newspaper, and by getting your hands on some of the trade papers and magazines read by people in that field.

A few issues of The Wall Street Journal, for instance, will give you a veneer of knowledge about the financial community—as will such publications as Advertising Age, Petroleum News, The Law Journal, and Women’s Wear Daily about the respective fields for which they are published. If the city you live in doesn’t have such publications on the newsstands, go to the library to bone up on them.

The more you know about the type of business you want to become part of the more intelligently you will be able to handle the interview you eventually get. If you have narrowed down your job goal to a specific company, try to get your hands on their last Annual Report (from a bank or stockbroker) and study it. It will fill you in on pertinent facts about the company’s products or services, growth pattern, position in the industry, policies, and so on.

All this information, plus how you are dressed for your interview, will stand you in very good stead and help your chances for getting the job you want.

THE ACCEPTANCE LOOK

What you wear for that interview will also depend to some extent on the caliber of job you’re after. It is obvious that if you are being interviewed for a secretarial position that pays from $65 to $100 a week, wearing a $5,000 mink coat or lavish jewelry will not be good judgment even if your father is a millionaire. We talked to numerous personnel directors in preparing this book, and their consensus of opinion is that in hiring young women for secretarial or other clerical work, they want people that fit in with the general character of the organization and with the other personnel. Obviously, a girl with a millionairess’s wardrobe could only incur envy and animosity among a group of girls less richly endowed.

Personnel directors try to avoid inter-office jealousies created by inequities of this kind, and prefer new employees that fit the image already in existence. Extremism in make-up, hairdos, length of skirts or brilliance of color are likely to be frowned on. The interviewer will think, ‘This one has just cooked too long—she’s overdone in every way.’ Simplicity and good taste are the rules in applying for any job, plus the immaculate grooming that speaks louder than words about how neat and careful a girl will be in her work.

The basic elements of any business woman’s wardrobe should rely on this trio: simple casual suits, tailored dresses and good separates (shirts, blouses, sweaters and other tops). For specific guidance, you’ll find detailed lists in Chapter 12.

Before you are interviewed for the job you want, try on the complete outfit you intend to wear. Look at yourself in the mirror from every angle, including sitting down which is the way you will look most of the time to the person who will make the decision. Ask yourself these questions: (a) Do I look well groomed? (b) Do I look neat? (c) Do I feel comfortable and at ease? (d) Does my skirt ride up too much? (e) Have I worn too much (or too little) make-up or jewelry? (f) Does this outfit really fit the image of the position I hope to fill?

We have known of instances where extremely capable women failed to get a job because they looked too elegantly put together. One personnel director confided to us in a specific case, ‘I didn’t hire her simply because I felt anyone that looked that attractive would have a date every night in the week and would never be free to stay until 5:15 in an emergency.’

This doesn’t mean that dressing to get a job should be an effort to make yourself less attractive. It means you should look your best—but your business best rather than your beau-catching best.

Vast changes have taken place in the last twenty years in ‘types’ of dressing. Remember when the very word ‘schoolteacher’ conjured up a vision of a hard-bitten, flat-chested, flat-heeled, bespectacled female with no more sex appeal than a dishpan? Gone are those days. Schoolteachers today look as pretty and fashionable as other business women, but they don’t come into the classroom done up like Sex Goddesses.

In the movie industry the same changes have taken place. Costuming relies much more on reality than on fantasy. Having dressed thousands of actors and actresses for every conceivable type of role, I can tell you that we too have made mistakes in judgment. Once upon a time glamor was the costume requirement of every movie star in every part, whether or not the role called for it. In the Thirties, Carole Lombard was costumed for the role of a little secretary practically dripping with pearls and sables. Today people would laugh out loud at such a characterization. Now, with far more sophisticated audiences, a great deal of research is done to make sure that every actor or actress is dressed the way he or she would be dressed for the actual situation.

To make a movie credible to its audience, stars must be dressed prop­erly and authentically for the activities in which they are involved. Doris Day as a schoolteacher was dressed differently from Shirley MacLaine as a magazine writer. Elizabeth Taylor as a clerk in a bookstore was wardrobed in a different manner from Jane Wyman as a department store executive. Eva Gabor as a fashion stylist had an entirely different look from Julie Andrews as a scientist or Anne Bancroft as a secretary.

When we are involved in a scene where a girl works at Lockheed, we don’t guess about what she should wear. We go to Lockheed and find out. If she is portraying the part of a banker’s secretary, we send scouts to banks to see what the going garb is in such inner sanctums.

In Love for a Proper Stranger we had to dress Natalie Wood as a sales­girl in the pet department at Macy’s. We went straight to Macy’s and shopped for a hamster. We saw that the girls who handled animals all wore a certain kind of smock. We got a sample of it and copied it exactly. Today people expect this kind of authenticity in theatrical costuming—and they expect the same kind of ‘fitness for the occasion’ in everything you wear too.

In Hollywood we call this aspect of costuming the ‘acceptance look’—a good term to have in your own wardrobe vocabulary.

Naturally if the business you want to break into is a field where fashion flair, color co-ordination and ideas are essential, you should make a point of dressing to play up these talents, in keeping with the job. For example, if you were applying for a position as assistant buyer in the sportswear department of a large department store, it would just be silly to go in for the interview in anything but a handsome sportswear outfit, such as a good knitted dress or tweed separates.

In the picture Houseboat I was called upon to dress that exciting Sophia Loren as, of all things, a mousey little housekeeper. Believe me, this took more doing than turning Olive Oyl into a sex symbol. It’s harder to make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse than vice versa. Sophia said, ‘Please, Edith, make me look as though I really am this poor, overworked woman. I want to be believed in completely.’ A few weeks later, when she saw the rushes of the scene, she said, ‘Edith, that’s marvelous; if that woman was sent to me for a job as a housekeeper—I’d hire her!’

We ask you to project some of these experiences into your own scheme of things in job-getting. Analyze the kind of business you’re attempting to break into—find out the ‘acceptance look’ for that industry or company, and package yourself to it.

GETTING AHEAD ON THE JOB

Again you have to have a specific goal in mind. What does getting ahead mean—merely getting a $ 5 raise every six months? Or does it mean moving gradually or quickly up the ladder to genuine career status—private secretary to the president—private office of your own—or whatever is your goal?

It is obvious that a too-impatient attitude and a too-driving nature in the race for success can propel you backwards through the door you came in. So don’t let everyone know you think you’re cut out for better things. Let them find it out. There’s no need to hide your light under a bushel of modesty either. The important thing in your progress toward the better job you want is to get there on the path that avoids stepping on other people’s toes. Remember those aching toes can retaliate by trip­ping you up on the way to success. So watch them.

Above all, do your present job perfectly, to the utmost of your capacity. Many a ball game has been lost because of an overeager second base­man who is so anxious to throw the ball that he fails to catch it first. If you learn how to do the job at hand with excellence and thoroughness, you will not only have a better chance of moving ahead to a better job, but you will be equipping yourself for a better future in every area—including marriage.

If you have what it takes—in talent, skill and personality—and you know where you want to go in a specific area, our advice is start working on it now. Take some night courses in subjects that will ready you for that important upward step. What subjects will help you most in that coveted spot: Accounting? Merchandising? Public speaking? A foreign language? Marketing? Salesmanship?

If courses on the subjects you need are not available in your city, read all about them. Haunt the library for books that will help you to be a self-made woman. And at the same time, start to dress up to the part.

This new on-the-way-up situation, unlike the initial one of getting the job, allows you much more leeway in the way you dress. First of all, once you have established your worth to the company and want to be considered for a position with greater status, you can step a little bit out of the picture frame that holds the ‘acceptance look’ into what might be called the ‘executive look.’

No doubt you will have noticed that the female executives in your chosen field make a point of dressing a little differently from the run-of-the-mill office girls. Where the girls in the stenographic pool come into the office in sweaters and skirts, the executive in charge wears a completely co-ordinated costume. Where the receptionist may go to lunch with a scarf over her head and no gloves, the executive-to-be wears a smart hat and gloves, if only to set herself apart from the crowd.

She eschews ‘faddy’ here-today-gone-tomorrow styles for things that reflect quality and taste. She resists the desire to have a lot of changes in her wardrobe in order to concentrate on fewer, more elegantly fashioned costumes that do more for her, and which are not in the lookalike wardrobes of the other girls. She invests in clothes which are not strikingly different, but which are intrinsically finer.

The feminine executive is no longer a phenomenon in our society. More and more businesses are recognizing the equal-to-men talents of women in top-echelon jobs, and while the opportunity to reach such high positions is open to only the exceptional individual, looking the part is of even more importance at this level. The reasons are obvious. In an executive capacity, a woman in business meets more people from the outside. She is called upon, perhaps, to entertain customers, handle difficult situations, exercise authority. She lunches with and is socially accepted by other executives, both male and female. She can no longer afford to look like one of the girls in the office.

At the same time she cannot afford to overlook the organization she is part of, any more than a male executive can. Nobody cares much, for instance, if the stockboy comes to work on a hot day in a short-sleeved sports shirt with no jacket, but woe be unto the rising young assistant vice-president who sits in his air-conditioned office in sneakers and no necktie.

By the same token, the appearance you make on your rise to success must be in keeping with both where you are and where you want to go. This imposes some hardships on you, perhaps, in comparison to the carefree little file clerk whom nobody sees. She can be stockingless, girdleless, gloveless, hatless and shiftless with far less danger than you can. You have something to live up to: your future success in the exciting job you want most.

When you reach the top rung it’s a different story. The eccentricities of the genius who is top man (or woman) on the totem pole of tycoonery are not only condoned but admired. What you wear when you sit in the president’s chair is entirely up to you. At that point you can give this book to your assistant and make notes on what you’ll wear as chairman of the board.

On the way up, however, distinction without flamboyance should be your credo. And don’t be trapped by your own desire to follow the crowd by wearing the last scream of fashion. Subdue that urge to buy what merchants call a ‘hot number.’ This is the dress or suit that is copied in every price level and winds up in the closet of every third girl in the office.

When every other girl in the office has decided to wear her hair up or teased or straight to the shoulders—that’s the time for you to achieve a new and distinctive look. When the current make-up theme is ‘doe eyes’ or ‘two pairs of lashes’ or ‘pale lips’ or ‘hollow cheeks,’ resist—desist—and be yourself. Wear the make-up that does the most for you while everyone else in the office projects a single monotonous pattern.

There is always a subtle difference between those who lead and those who are led. If your energies and executive abilities place you at the front of the parade, don’t wear a private’s uniform.

Now for a few suggestions to both the job-hunters and the career-minded. A good cookbook may be able to give a cut-and-dried recipe for salad dressing, but there is no set of measured ingredients for success dressing. In many cases you have to experiment. Try it, taste it, add a little, take away a littlee and change it until it’s right.

However, there is one rul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Dedication page
• Introduction
• 1 How to Dress for Success in Business
• 2 How to Dress to Get a Man ... and Keep Him
• 3 How to Dress Your Family for Success
• 4 How to Build a Successful Wardrobe
• 5 How to Succeed in Looking Younger
• 6 How to Analyze Your Figure
• 7 How to Use Color Successfully
• 8 Success in Fashion Camouflage
• 9 The ‘Successories’ of Your Wardrobe or Accessories Season the Costume
• 10 The ‘Secrets of Success’ or Underneath It All
• 11 How to Shop for Success
• 12 Basic Wardrobe Charts
• 13 Nothing Succeeds Like Success
• Copyright page