Last week a young friend suggested lunch at a nearby café. I politely declined.

Seeing her surprise, I explained that I’d eaten there once and wasn’t impressed with the food. But it was more than the mediocre dish they’d served. It was the owner of the establishment, who doubles as manager and chef. “The way she dresses,” I said, “the gym shorts and t-shirt, don’t respect the customers or the help. Worst of all, it shows she doesn’t respect the food she cooks.”

To be blunt, this woman goes to work daily dressed like a slob in the very establishment she operates.

She’s little different than all those Americans who appear in public like they’d just rolled out of bed and thrown on clothes snatched from a hamper of dirty laundry. Stroll through Walmart or your local grocery store, and there they are pushing their shopping carts, unkempt, frowsy, rarely smiling, and with postures like used paper straws. Does this convey that these are citizens of the most powerful and prosperous republic on the face of the earth? I think not.

Here’s a personal example of how low our standards have fallen. I normally appear in public in a pair of khaki trousers, a shirt with a button-down collar, and a pair of black walking shoes. Nothing special here, but my grandkids think I’m always dressed up, and twice even their friends have told me so. Believe me: When Jeff Minick is deemed high fashion, then fashion is wearing a toe tag.

Moreover, the clothing we wear in public has effects beyond surface appearances. In “The Power of Dressing Up,” Leah Nalepa writes, “Beyond mere aesthetics, the way we dress profoundly impacts our mindset, behavior, and even how others perceive us.” She then notes with brief, straight-up explanations that dressing up rather than down boosts confidence, enhances professionalism, fosters discipline and routine, improves productivity, impacts perception, preserves a sense of occasion, and cultivates personal style.

Nalepa’s points have been tested formally. Researchers have found, for instance, that “enclothed cognition – the idea that what we wear can influence our mindset, behavior and even how we perceive ourselves” – is generally the case. Our clothing signals our self-perception to the world. Another study performed at Temple University found that dressing well not only increases productivity but “encourages employees to seek out social interactions with their colleagues.”

Several personal observations support these studies. Because I work at home as well as in a coffee shop or the library, I often spend the first couple hours of my writing day in a time-beaten sweatshirt and pajama bottoms, unshowered and unshaven. Over the past year or so, I’ve noticed that once I discard the nightwear, spiff up, and put on street clothes, my attitude toward my work changes. A reveille call sounds with this transformation, announcing that it’s time to get serious, that the real day has now begun.

In my favorite coffee shop, uniformed students from two nearby private Catholic schools often swing by for a drink or a treat. The girls’ plaid skirts and the boys’ jackets set them apart and tell others who they are. What those young people may not realize is that their uniforms also serve another purpose. As an administrator at Baltimore’s Calvert School told me decades ago, “We have a dress code because it tells students that school is serious business.”

This same coffee shop is popular with local homeschooling moms, many of whom daily wear dresses or skirts rather than sweats. They’re usually trailed by toddlers or pushing a stroller. What these women think of themselves I don’t know, but by their motherhood and their modest attire they exude a tender, exotic beauty. As Nalepa observed, they are impacting perception and cultivating a style, which in their case is the promotion of virtue and goodness.

Nalepa is on the mark. How we dress impacts our mindset and sheds a light on who we are.

Awhile back I wrote an article entitled, “How Did American Become a Nation of Slobs?” I concluded with the following remark:

Oscar Wilde once said, ‘You can never be overdressed or overeducated.’ No one would ever consider me overdressed – or overeducated, for that matter – but if I am now regarded as well dressed, a man representing haute couture, then I can only draw one conclusion.

We are a nation of slobs.

Maybe I’m growing soft as I age, but I see circumstances improving a bit. Those mothers in their dresses, those teens in their uniforms, the well-attired men and women gathered at a luncheon I attended recently – maybe these are signs that the age of sloth and sloven is coming to an end.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image Credit: Public Domain Pictures