I’m a big believer in the power of clothes. What we wear sends signals to the people around us. Clothes can communicate who we are, how much money we make, what mood we’re in, and what job we do.
When some people go to work, they wear a uniform. Chefs, pilots, and plumbers all wear uniforms. When we see people dressed in those uniforms, we know how to behave around them. What a ‘normal’ interaction should be. But, artists have historically said no to uniforms (after the whole beret thing died down). After all, the clothes we wear can also be used to express ourselves, and that should *not* have rules, right?
But everyone wears a uniform, whether they like it or not. I can’t go to a school workshop dressed in an expensive suit. It’d be too weird. The kids wouldn’t know how to behave, nor would the teachers, no matter how engaging I was. People would likely stiffen up. Maybe be a bit more formal. Creative people are supposed to be sneakers and jeans type of people, aren’t they? Relaxed. Or they’re supposed to wear shirts and dresses with colourful patterns, bright colours, or cute animals on them. Even if 50% of the work of being an artist is spent doing paperwork and managing finances, we’re still expected to ‘look creative’.
Well, it turns out that what we wear not only changes the way people around us behave, but it changes us, too. It’s been proven that if we wear a white scientist’s lab coat, we’re able to concentrate for longer periods of time. That’s weird, isn’t it?
I hear creative people struggle with balancing the creative work with the work of running a business. Procrastination. Boredom. Block. I hear plenty of remedies for these things – go for a run, take a walk, have a shower, just forget about it for a while. But what if all we needed to do was put on a different jacket or shirt? What if I wore a business shirt while I did my accounts? What if I wore a painter’s apron when I was looking to explore new colour palettes? Maybe that’s worth a try, instead. Maybe we need to just dress for the occasion.