Justine Leconte, a minor French designer who writes and has a youtube channel, posted this very thought provoking essay today:

“In French, we say “clothes don’t make the monk”.
(L’habit ne fait pas le moine)

It means that dressing as someone does not make you that someone.

Well, turns out it might be incorrect!

In a fascinating experiment published in 2012, two researchers (H. Adam & A. Galinsky) tested whether wearing a specific outfit makes people behave differently.

First, they took the example of a lab coat, typically associated with science and lab work. They asked a group of people to wear the lab coat. A second group had no lab coat on.

Then they had both groups take some cognitive tests… and found that the people with the lab coat scored better in attention and carefulness – skills we associate with science and lab work.

It gets even wilder in part 2 of the experiment.

One group had to wear the lab coat and was told it was a doctor’s coat. The other group had to wear the lab coat too, but was told it was a painter’s coat. Though in reality, it was the exact same lab coat for both groups.

Can you guess what happened?

People who wore the “doctor’s coat” were more attentive, for longer.
People who wore the “painter’s coat” were not more attentive than without a lab coat.

In other words, clothes influence our behaviour: both through wearing them and through the symbolic meaning we attach to them!

So when we dress for a job interview or an important meeting ( = when we need to shine), you understand that what we choose to wear really matters.”

So take heart— if you are beginning to wonder if maybe you should not care so much about what you wear (looking in the mirror here!) we know it does matter, not just in how you appear to others but how you feel about yourself 😎