The Power of Dressing Down

So I did a whole post about the power of clothes and how dressing "up" can improve your confidence and make you feel like you will garner more respect. This post though, will be about the flip side; about the power of being comfortable and letting your skills do the talking. You know those people who are so laid back and laissez-faire they must know what they're doing. As with most things, I imagine the ideal lies somewhere along the spectrum and varied person to person.

Two people who have found their "coordinates" particularly well though, are my supervisors, who will henceforth be known as Glitter and Gold. Yes, I know, this breaks the fairy tale trend but it fits so well. Gold is in his early 30's and has more of what would be considered a full time position as the lighting associate at the theatre. He will go off contract a few times a year to design his own projects and at that time Glitter steps into the picture. Gold has reached a point in his career where he's doing a lot more designing outside our theatre and most of his assisting is done as part of his job here. Glitter is in his mid-20's and is a major hot shot assistant as well as a brilliant designer in his own right. He doesn't spend as much time on contract at our theatre and thusly does a lot of assisting out and about in the city. This means that after my internship I will follow him like a lost puppy voluntarily assisting him on bigger shows so I can learn from him and meet new people and grow up to be just like him! He definitely has to rely on his freelance assisting more that Gold does so the two of them combined have been awesome career advisers although my work life will probably more closely resemble Glitter's for a while.

Glitter and Gold are never dressed inappropriately and they are always professional. They've found this pleasant, artsy, casual zone where they are comfy at the tech table but can head to a restaurant with a designer at the drop of a hat. It gives them this whole "Oh you need me to save the show? Sure. I can do that one-handed while keeping track of woot.com, listening to NPR, and listing all of the new Apple products for 2010." vibe. By the way, they both totally could. Gold would probably also be having a deep discussion about the appropriate visual aesthetic for the latest experimental piece he's working on and Glitter would be doing some mad photo and video editing of the latest musical review he co-produced. I made little ensembles for them based on their styles.



They've just achieved such a perfect balance. It's hard comparing a guy's wardrobe to my own. I don't want to be sexist and say it's harder for women but part of me feels like if I were to wear jeans and a hoody I would look frumpier than my male counterpart. Please feel free to disagree and correct me if you think I'm wrong. Especially if you're a guy. But for now that's how I feel. I think I need some more versatile pieces that look great but are super comfy. I think the secret lies in outerwear and select accessories. Here are some ideas:



The good news is I have a lot of cute jewelry I love. I just tend to not wear it. Especially necklaces because I have a very sentimental, personal necklace I wear daily. I sense a challenge coming on!