The Finesse Of Power Dressing

The shifts and changes in power dressing are ever-evolving and continue to the present day. Ai Lim examines the shifts and significance of power dressing through the years, the designers who have impacted this change and its importance to society

- Ai Lim

“Dressing well and first impressions are important” — an advice that has been incessantly ingrained and hammered into my very fibre and bones (or my head at least anyway) by my well-dressed parents. Admittedly, as a child and teenager, dressing well did not matter to me. Those frou-frou dresses with ribbons aplenty? I guess it looked presentable on my five-year-old self. Those navy ruched gathered leggings when I was seven? Adored by my mum and other aunts who thought I looked cute, but loathed with venom and vile by the very person who wore them. Eventually, I came round to them for reasons I can’t quite seem to remember, but no matter. As I grow older, the importance of dressing well and looking the part has never been more poignant and I find myself increasingly partial to the very advice my parents have given me for a very simple reason: it is a way and means of discipline and “power”; having ownership over another’s perception of yourself. You choose how you want to be perceived by others by the way you dress. I thought this was clever and integral in any social scene and setting. After all, humans are visual creatures and rely heavily on visual cues for basic adaptive behaviours (Kaas and Balaram, 2014).