Why We SHOULD Dress Better. . .

Holding up the bar in the 1930s. Maybe we don't need to dress to quite this degree in 2019, but it's a damn sight more sophisticated than what society has allowed itself to devolve to -- think cheap black pants, dusty square-toed shoes, and the ubiquitous pilled fleece with a company logo sewn to the chest -- in the last 30 years of so.

Here's what others have to say on the topic of dressing better than what has become the accepted average most places, and why doing so is necessary:

The Psychology of Dressing Well

The Influence of Clothing on First Impressions

Enclothed Cognition

The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing

Mind Games: Sometimes a White Coat Isn't Just a White Coat

Dress, Body, and Self: Research in the Social Psychology of Dress

Dressing for Success and the Achievement of Your Dreams

What Your Clothes Might Be Saying about You

How Clothes Influence Our Performance

Wearing a Suit Makes You Think Differently

Business Casual Has Turned Workwear into a Nightmare

Business Casual Is Turning Into Business Whatever

Have We Taken Casual Workwear too Far?

Business Casual for Men (March 2018)

15 Habits of Well-dressed Men

Of course, it's your call to make when it comes to how you want others to see you through your choice of attire, but allow me to make a couple of related observations.

Dressing better, the perception of comfort, and economic sensibility need not be mutually exclusive after all. Perhaps if more people made the effort to dress even a tiny bit better than has become the accepted norm for most, they might feel better about themselves and their lives, gradually reducing the sheer number of people on anti-depressants.

Who knows? There might just be a link between schlepping around in bagged out sweats, cargo shorts, grubby khakis -- or some kind of earth tone top with too much scarf looped artlessly around the neck ala Oprah, leggings, and Crocs/Uggs for the ladies -- and how we feel about ourselves.

People might be surprised by how their general mood, outlook, behavior, related choices, and lives change for the better when they clothe themselves better. . . along with a wee bit of color and pattern. A few steps in the direction of 'Positive with a capital P' can hardly be a bad thing in our otherwise anxious and negative era.

With that in mind, shouldn't we hold ourselves to a marginally better standard even when we're off the clock? It's a topic that warrants some serious thought.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

Comments

Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Classic Style

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