After seeing some studies confirming the adage "Clothes make the man, " we requested the author to prepare the fol lowing article. You owe it to yourself and your ministry to read it carefully. —The Editors.
Do you realize that clothing is one of the important factors that affect your ministry?
"Clothing? Preposterous!"
But before you discard the idea, consider this statement —"When you meet a person for the first time, before you open your mouth, that person judges you on your appearance and bearing." —Forrest H. Frantz, Sr., The Miracle Success System (West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker Publishing Co., Inc.). After all, first impressions are made in an amazingly short period of time—perhaps thirty second—and in that interval there is really little else to use in evaluation.
Today, reliable research can document down to the last detail how men's clothing affects our perceptions of its wearer. John T. Molloy, author of the best-selling Dress for Success (for men), spent seventeen years collecting such data. His research includes the opinions and subconscious opinions of more than fifteen thousand people, constituting a wide cross section of the general public.
"We are preconditioned by our environment," says Molloy, "and the clothing we wear is an integral part of that environment. The way we dress has a remarkable impact on the people we meet and greatly affects how they treat us."
How can we avoid making mistakes in choosing the clothing we wear? The solution, says Molloy, a former teacher turned management consultant, is to let research choose your clothing.
Studies of verbal and nonverbal communication show the nonverbal has stronger effects. Thus clothes and appearance (nonverbal communicators) either reinforce verbal impressions or contradict (and often overwhelm) them. The business executive who dresses conservatively doesn't have to explain his authority. His clothes do it for him. In fact, those who adopt the conservative look assume the authority that goes with it. Molloy early discovered that the value of a man's clothing is important in determining his credibility and acceptance. People who are well dressed receive preferential treatment in almost all social and business encounters. If you don't believe it, try it when you go shopping.
Molloy, named "America's first wardrobe engineer" by Time magazine, did extensive research with the raincoat. There are two standard colors of rain coats sold in this country—beige and black. Molloy tested 1,362 persons by showing them almost identical pictures of two men assuming the same pose and in the same suit, shirt, tie, and shoes. The only difference was the color of their raincoats. Those being tested were asked to choose the most prestigious of the two. The beige raincoat was the choice of 1,118 people, or 87 percent.
Following this test, Molloy and two friends wore beige raincoats for a month. The next month they wore black raincoats. At the end of each period they catalogued the attitudes of people toward them. The three men agreed that the beige raincoat created a distinctly more favorable impression upon waiters, store clerks, and businessmen they met.
Finally, Molloy picked a group of twenty-five business offices and went to each with a copy of The Wall Street Journal, asking the secretary to allow him to deliver it personally to the individual in charge. When he wore a beige raincoat, he delivered the papers in a single morning. Wearing the black rain coat, he spent a day and a half to deliver the twenty-five papers.
Molloy conducted further research in a large corporation that had two branch offices. One office enforced a dress code; the other did not. Secretaries in the office that had no dress code were late or absent 3 to 5 percent more often than those in the office that had a code, stayed at their desks 5 percent less, and spent 5 percent less time at their typewriters! After a dress code had been enforced for a year at the office that didn't have a code, the workers were found to have improved their performance in every area. They stayed at their desks longer, and their lateness record dropped 15 percent!
Molloy also conducted research to determine whether the white dress shirt was an important factor in IBM's spectacular success over its competitors. Most people in business know of IBM's once official but now unofficial enforcement of a rather strict dress code, particularly for its salesmen. Molloy surveyed 106 executives, asking questions that called for moral values. Which men were late to work more often? Which cheated on their expense reports? Which were better family men? Of the 106 in the study, 87 attributed greater moral strengths to the men dressed in white shirts than to those wearing shirts of other colors! Ninety-three said they thought that a white shirt was an asset to the IBM salesmen.
Fifty-six executives of those inter viewed had made major purchases of IBM equipment the previous year. They stated that their primary motivation for choosing IBM was a belief in that company's moral—yes, moral—superiority, says Molloy. Although each of the executives cited multiple reasons for his purchases, the white-shirt response was glaring in its importance, and the decision to buy IBM equipment was based largely on the positive moral characteristics attributed to the dress of IBM's salesmen—a look the executives described as "conservative," "reliable," "efficient," and "morally upright."
When Molloy first began testing, he photographed a dozen men in conservative, well-matched colors and patterns. Then he photographed another dozen men in a more contemporary style of clothing such as is generally seen in fashion magazines. When these photo graphs were mixed together, 70 to 80 percent of those tested chose the men in the conservative dress as more tastefully attired than those in the more modern dress, even though as many as half the men being interviewed did not dress conservatively themselves! Even when 70 to 80 percent of the men being questioned themselves dressed in more modern color combinations and style, their answers never changed significantly!
The fact that the colors, patterns, and combinations of clothing that score the highest positive results among the largest majority of the population are all traditional and conservative came as no great surprise to Molloy. The most successful businessmen have worn conservative clothing for years, and most likely will for many years to come.
When Molloy confirmed this "familiarity effect," he tested it further, using shirts and ties. He asked three hundred people to judge a grouping of traditional shirts and ties and another grouping that, although nontraditional, were not gaudy. The subjects were to score each combination as exhibiting good taste, poor taste, or as being neutral. Eighty-seven percent chose the traditional combinations as in good taste. Seventy percent chose the more modern combinations as being in poor taste.
Molloy conducted more experiments testing the necktie than any other article of clothing. "Whether you like it or not, or believe it or not," he says, "your tie, more than any other aspect of your appearance, will determine how people view your credibility, personality, and ability." His surveys leave no question that the tie symbolizes respectability and responsibility. Hundreds of tie patterns exist, but only a few are suitable for professional wear. Illustrations of these appear in Molloy's book. When properly tied, the tip of the tie should come just to the belt buckle. Thus your height will determine the length of tie you will need and how to knot it. For business wear, bow ties give off several negative effects. If bow ties are worn as sports attire, the same patterns are recommended as for all other ties.
In all tests, the most acceptable dress shirts are, and will continue to be, white and solid pale colors. These evoke the best responses for credibility and effectiveness. Properly color-coordinated solids go with every suit and tie. Pale-blue is still the most popular of the solid colors for shirts. Pink and lavender shirts are too feminizing and have negative masculine reactions. And according to Molloy, research shows that a man should never wear a solid red shirt, no matter who he is or what he does.
What about shirt-sleeve length? Molloy gives the following all-embracing caution: "You will never, ever, as long as you live, wear a short-sleeve shirt for any business purpose, no matter whether you are the office boy or the president." Research shows that men who wear short sleeves have secretaries who arrive late 125 percent more often and come back from lunch late 130 percent more often than secretaries of those who wear long-sleeved shirts.
Molloy is frequently asked whether there are any traits common to all successful executives. He answers, "There most definitely are: they always have their hair combed and their shoes shined. And they expect the same of other men."
Molloy makes two important statements in his book: "If I have conveyed nothing other than the message that clothing should be used as a tool, then I have fully succeeded in my goal.
"If the reader has accepted my second message, that beauty is not the name of the game, efficiency is—then I'm a perfectly happy man."
Fortunately, cost is not a significant factor in dressing for success. Molloy states that if a man knows how to choose his clothing, he can, without substantial increase in his clothing expenditure, look right on all occasions. After years of tabulation, he has devised a simple set of do's and don'ts that make it possible for any man to dress in a way that will greatly improve his effectiveness. Many men have already done so through their own innate knowledge of good taste.
Some of Molloy's research involved ministers and their clothing. He showed pictures of men in various outfits and asked the respondents to identify the clergymen. Their image of a clergyman was a man in a conservatively cut two-piece black, navy, or dark-gray suit with a white shirt and conservative tie. They seldom identified men in three-piece business attire as clergymen.
This information is significant, because of the role of expectation. If people expect a man in a particular profession to dress in a certain manner, they are more likely to believe him and trust him if he appears in the expected garb.
The research also included pictures of several dozen men identified as clergy men wearing everything from traditional clerical attire to leisure suits. Molloy asked his subjects which ministers they considered most effective, sympathetic, best educated, et cetera. Then he had them choose the pictures of the men they would most like to have as their minister and the men they would least like to have. In both tests they chose men in conservative, two-piece suits as their favorites. Surprisingly, as many business men rejected "clergymen" wearing three-piece pin-striped suits as they did those wearing leisure suits.
Earlier research showed that the clergy who did not wear the conservative clergy garb were less effective in their ministry than were those who wore the identifiable clothing. Could it be that the way the minister dresses has some bearing even on his soul-winning activities?
William Thourlby wrote recently: "Aside from the glamour professions like entertainment and advertising, the top executives in most conservative corporations wear traditional clothing that does not call attention to itself. Quiet reliability is part of the look. In fact, be wary of any item of clothing that you are complimented on—unless you sell clothing ! You want to show that your mind is on business, not your clothes." —Sky, January, 1980.
However, we must remember that most clergymen on any given day per form a variety of tasks and deal with a cross section of the public. Obviously, they would not wear a suit to help with church construction or when accompanying a group of young people to the beach. The first rule of dress is common sense.
The following words were penned in 1871, long before Molloy and his re search: "It is important that the minister's manner be modest and dignified, in keeping with the holy, elevating truth he teaches, that a favorable impression may be made upon those who are not naturally inclined to religion. Carefulness in dress is an important item. . . .
"Black or dark material is more be coming to a minister in the desk and will make a better impression upon the people than would be made by a combination of two or three different colors in his apparel. . . . The very dress will be a recommendation of the truth to unbelievers. It will be a sermon in itself. . . .
"A minister who is negligent in his apparel often wounds those of good taste and refined sensibilities. . . . The loss of some souls at last will be traced to the untidiness of the minister. The first appearance affected the people unfavorably because they could not in any way link his appearance with the truths he presented. His dress was against him; and the impression given was that the people whom he represented were a careless set who cared for nothing about their dress, and his hearers did not want anything to do with such a class of people." —Testimonies, vol. 2, pp. 610-613.
