Next you should go up and examine the deceased, then go back and inform the next of kin how good he looks. “Ed looks great!” you should say. “You can hardly even tell he’s dead!” Unless Ed is in an urn.
Chapter Seven. How To Dress Exactly Like Everybody Else
Take a moment to consider the way the world’s truly successful people dress. They dress like mental patients. Your prime example is Prince Charles. Here is one of the world’s top princes, if not the top prince, yet he is constantly showing up in public wearing ludicrous Sergeant Pepper-style outfits featuring hats with enormous feathers. Or you’ll see a picture of him visiting some remote fungal nation and cheerfully wearing ritual native vegetation around his neck. There are plenty of other examples of highly successful people who dress absurdly: Mick Jagger, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ronald McDonald, to name just three. And of course you can’t find a really successful world religious leader who doesn’t wear a comical outfit.
So what does this tell you about how you should dress if you want to succeed in American business? Nothing. Because the way we dress in American business is not based on the way the world’s truly successful people dress. It is based on the way John T. Molloy says we should dress. Molloy is the author of the best-selling books Dress for Success, The Woman’s Dress for Success Book, Live for Success, and Success in the Afterlife. He openly admits to practicing a science called “wardrobe engineering.” He has done extensive wardrobe research, wherein he tested the reactions of thousands of groups of people to the way different individuals were dressed. What he found, after years and years of study, was that the groups always liked it best when the individuals were naked. So he pretty much gave up the research and decided instead to author best-selling books containing incredibly detailed instructions on how to dress and what accessories to carry, instructions that were so slavishly followed by the business community that they briefly resulted in a worldwide shortage of Cross pens.
The bottom line is, if you truly want to present a business wardrobe image that makes the all-important fashion statement: “I look exactly like everybody else in American business,” you damn well better dress the way John T. Molloy says you should. So listen up.
How Men Should Dress
Basically, the American businessman should dress as though he recently lost his entire family in a tragic boat explosion. We are talking about a subdued look here. This doesn’t mean that you have no choice in what you wear. Au contraire. For example, you may wear two completely different colors of woolen suit: you may wear a dark gray woolen suit, or, if you want to get really crazy, you may wear a dark blue woolen suit.
You may not wear a brown, green, or (God forbid) plaid polyester suit, because everybody will think you just tromped into town from rural Louisiana to attend the Live Bait Show. Men wearing these colors are very likely to be passed over for promotion, as is shown by this actual simulation of a scene that for all we know probably occurs every day in major corporations:
(We are in the office of the president, who is meeting with a vice-president to decide whom to promote to director of the Research Department.)
VICE-PRESIDENT: Well, there’s Barkley, of course. He’s the one who came up with the way to turn discarded wads of Kleenex into gold using only common household ingredients.
PRESIDENT: What color suit does he wear?
VICE-PRESIDENT: Brown.
PRESIDENT: Well forget him.
Shirts
Your shirt should be white, and it should not have the name “Earl” embroidered anywhere on it.
Ties
The purpose of your tie is to suggest that you attended an Ivy League university, so the key is to select the right pattern.
How To Tie A Tie
Face southwest, with the long end of the tie hanging down casually from your right hand (the audience’s left hand). Now bring the short end of the tie around the back of your neck and let it hang down your front, so that it just touches the scar you got ironing shirts naked. Now take the “wide” (or “long”) end of the tie and pass it three times around the “short” (or “long”) end, then up through the loop. (What do you mean, “What loop?” Check again!) Now pull everything snug, unless you have forgotten to put on a shirt, in which case you had best remove the tie, by force if necessary.
Shoes
These are a “must” in most business situations. If you use “Odor Eaters,” they should be beige or navy blue.
Underwear
No area of the male business wardrobe is as important as his underwear. Next time you’re in a room with a group of successful executives, take a few moments to examine their under-wear, and you’ll find they’re all wearing underwear with proven “power patterns” that have been shown in scientific tests to create a feeling of awe and respect in others.
In situations where you really need to enhance your power image, you should wear your power underwear outside your pants. In extreme situations, such as you are arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court, you will want to wear them in an even more visible location, such as on your head.
How Women Should Dress
In deciding how to dress for business, women must understand certain basic facts, the foremost being that all men are scum. If a woman, no matter how competent, gives off the slightest hint that she has any feelings that could be remotely construed as sexual, this is all that the men in her corporation will ever think about. That’s not just my opinion: it is a scientific finding based on years of extensively hanging around with guys and talking.
What does this mean, in terms of your business wardrobe? It means you want to adopt a fashion look that has become the standard for the woman on the corporate fast track, a look that can best be described as: Modified Nun. All we’ve really done to the basic nun look is remove the headpiece. This conveys to the men in your corporation that you are not a sex object, but an authority figure who must be taken seriously because at any moment you might strike them on the hands with a ruler.
Hosiery
This is mandatory. I realize you women hate to be constantly shelling out money for a product manufactured by an industry that pays its scientists huge bonuses if they can develop fibers even weaker than the ones they currently use. I realize you go around saying: “If we can land a man on the moon, why can’t we develop pantyhose that will last longer than a small vanilla cone on a hot day?” Well I’m sorry, but rules are rules. Also, we haven’t landed a man on the moon for a very long time now, and we probably never will again unless something urgent comes up, such as the Defense Department suspects there are Cuban troops up there.
Makeup
A good rule of thumb is: if you can stick a pin more than a quarter inch into your face and still not feel anything, you’re wearing too much makeup for the business environment. Or else you have a medical problem.