What Your Closet Reveals About You

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What Your Closet Reveals About You

Personality and clothing go along together. We always tend to make judgments about people with regards to the clothes they wear (Wilson, 2011). In majority of societies, our personal taste and wealth is embodied by our sense of dressing. It is instinctive to reflect on clothes as an ordinary covering or a means of projecting an individual image to other people. However enclothed cognition studies has revealed that clothes influence the person who wears them, by influencing their mind and affecting the thoughts processes (Willett, 2008). 

A sense of anonymity or de-individuation can be created after slipping on uniform, while wearing a sharp suit is accompanied by a power surge (Baumgartner, 2012). Personally, I tend to express myself with what I wear. Personal dress and adornment indicates some aspects, like, a person who dresses flamboyantly is possibly an outgoing individual. The person might be introspective and broody with a persecution complex tendency. Another example would be a lady who likes to wear floral prints may actually be a wall flower herself.

Clothes are an aid that inaugurates self-identity while having social interaction but it is not a comprehensive index of an individual (Willett, 2008). Baumgartner (2012) explains that the way people act and dress is a mirror of their interest and attitude. According to psychologists, our decisions in the wardrobe tell others about the secret desires that we tend to hide. A lady with over-the-top jewelry may imply financial difficulties and insecurities while the one who reveals too much cleavage reveals that they are power hungry and intense to be in control. According to Baumgartner (2012), a person’s clothing discloses what is really going on internally, their feelings and thoughts are set bare in the closet and all that an individual is required to do is search for them.

Studies also have shown that women who bottom up their clothes tell it to their boss that feminism is a weakness and not power (Wilson, 2011). High hills on the other hand might make a woman to appear less intelligent, but it inspires confidence by building the wearer to be as tall as her colleague (Wilson, 2011). Ladies who are always in trainers, jeans and unkempt hair may be ‘overly identifying with motherhood as they suppress other parts due to exhaustion or guilty. A woman who does not take more time in her clothes and looks may have low self-esteem.

Clothes can also be differentiated with age in regard to personality. A young girl with a short dress or skirt is regarded as an attention seeker. On the contrary, an older woman doing the same is regarded to devising problems that she has grown up. Different societies have different dress codes; western countries are seen to wear short and revealing clothes which are in contrast to blacks or Africans who are more conservative due to their culture and norms. In conclusion, what a person’s wears speaks in volume of who they are, and thus it is worthwhile to dress for impression as it can also lead to success.

References

Baumgartner,. (2012). You Are What You Wear: What Your Clothes Reveal About You. Da Capo: Da Capo Lifelong Books.

Willett, R. (2008). ‘What you wear tells a lot about you’: girls dress up online. Gender And Education, 20(5), 421-434. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250701797242

Wilson, C. (2011). What can your beautiful genome reveal about you?. New Scientist, 211(2828), 47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0262-4079(11)62170-2