42 Degrees - Business from a different angle

Guy Browning

Author, broadcaster and consultant Guy Browning has been described as the 'David Attenborough'of the business jungle. He started his career as an advertising copywriter, went on to be creative director of a marketing consultancy and now runs his own innovations consultancy advising organisations on new products, new ways of working and new ways of communication. Despite this, he has managed to retain his sense of humour and is now best known for his hilarious columns in 'The Guardian' and 'Management Today' and his 'Radio 4' programme 'Guy Browning's Small Talk'. He is author of several books including, 'Never Hit a Jellyfish With a Spade', 'Never Push When it says Pull' and, of course, 'Office Politics'.

When it comes to office attire, less is usually more . . . except when it comes to cufflinks. Guy Browning has a few sartorial pointers to help you project the right image.

In business, what you wear says more about you than you can ever say yourself. Decisions you make standing in front of the mirror first thing in the morning are more important than any decisions you'll make in the office.

The traditional male suit is like a woman, in that the closer it is to you, the better it feels. However, unlike a woman, single-breasted is always preferable to double-breasted. Only wide boys, lawyers and Tory candidates wear double-breasted suits. When it comes to selection of cloth there is a choice between very dark grey and very dark blue. Purple, taupe or red suits are for children's television presenters and account men in small design agencies with very poor creative work.

There are two types of ties in business. The first is the recessive sober pattern in six-fold silk. The other is a tie-shaped piece of Indian restaurant wallpaper, which hangs briefly round your neck before finding its natural resting place in a charity-shop window. Knots on ties should never be bigger than the head of the wearer. Similarly, a tie should never be wide enough to cover both nipples at once.

Men in the office have one place to demonstrate their sartorial flair and that is on their cuffs. The rule here is that if it would also look good as an earring, it's not an appropriate business cufflink.

You can wear sensible black lace-ups in business or you can willfully decide to wear some brown suede loafers and shunt your career into a siding called Total Failure. You can also wear sandals in business as long as your business is in IT software development and you don't want to have a meaningful relationship with anything that doesn't have Intel inside.

One of the secrets of being a top executive is that you should never be caught wearing the jacket of your suit. There are three places for your jacket to live: hanging in the back of your car, over the back of your chair in the office and in the wardrobe of the business-class compartment of a Boeing 777. Wearing a suit jacket makes you look slightly stiff, with an accountancy background. Not wearing your jacket makes you look hard working and approachable with a slightly creative background.

Working women often fling open their wardrobe in the morning and complain that they have nothing to wear. Yet you never see women in the office wearing nothing, so something's not quite right there. When men fling open the wardrobe, they see the same suit they have been wearing since school speech day, so agonising over what to wear is kept to an absolute minimum.

Skirt length is a good indicator of what sort of woman you're dealing with in the office. Slightly above the knee is your normal executive, well above the knee is predatory ball-breaker and well above the waist means adjustment is clearly required after a hasty visit to the Ladies. Skirts just above the ankle denote elderly secretaries working in family engineering firm back offices with a tendency towards nervous aliments. Never say to a business woman, “Oh, it's that old dress again,” especially if she's your boss and works in the fashion industry.

Women's jewellery has many meanings. Never trust women with more rings than fingers – no good ever comes of them. Similarly, beware women sporting a huge amount of jewellery all over their body. They are probably selling on commission and before you can say “Tupperware” you'll be sitting in their front room getting the hard sell on some delightful mother-of-pearl brooch and tiara combo.

Women live in abject fear of walking into a meeting and being confronted with another woman wearing exactly the same outfit. Fortunately, men don't feel the same way, otherwise in every meeting there would be at least one man storming out saying, “Oh my God, he's got exactly the same polo shirt and chinos. It's him or me.”