Should You Dress For The Job You Want?

There’s an old saying that, when it comes to deciding what to wear at the office, you should “dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” I’ve always found this maxim a little curious. Mostly because I knew that if I started showing up to the office dressed as Batman, it probably wouldn’t have a positive effect on my career.

I know the intent of the saying is that you should dress “up” to the next level of the organization, and not “down” to your level or below. (And you definitely shouldn’t wear just the minimum pieces of flair…for all you Office Space fans.)

But some recent research calls even this bit of common sense into question. Three researchers at the Harvard Business School designed a series of experiments to test participants perceptions of individuals who deliberately didn’t conform to the norms of dress. In one experiment, professional sales clerks at fine clothing boutiques in Rome consistently judged a hypothetical shopper who dressed down in athleisure as having more status and wealth. In another, students at elite universities consistently rated a male professor who bucked the dress code by wearing a t-shirt and arriving to class unshaven as more competent and higher status than a professor who “conformed” by wearing a shirt and tie and arriving clean shaven.