Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2.fluke 9/24/84; site fluke.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!fluke!inc From: inc@fluke.UUCP (Gary Benson) Newsgroups: net.jokes Subject: Dave Barry - Dress For Success Message-ID: <502@tpvax.fluke.UUCP> Date: Mon, 14-Jan-85 20:51:43 EST Article-I.D.: tpvax.502 Posted: Mon Jan 14 20:51:43 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 19-Jan-85 00:22:28 EST Distribution: net Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA Lines: 121 *- H O W T O D R E S S F O R R E A L S U C C E S S -* Uncovering a fashion fraud -By Dave Barry You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World. So you're probably pretty smug about the way you dress. At lunch you and your business friends sit around in restaurants wearing your simple blue or brown or gray suits with your white, cream or beige cotton shirts; your striped ties in which one of the colors matches your suit; and your brown or black shoes -- and you snicker when some guy walks in wearing a plaid leisure suit and a shirt depicting Arizona. "Look at that guy, he will never succeed." Which just shows you how much you know. The truth is, you don't know squat about dressing for success. If you did, you would be successful, which you obviously are not since you are reading an article about dressing for success. And I'll tell you who doesn't have to read this article: Prince Charles. Now he is successful. He has the Duchy of Cornwall, which, I understand, is an excellent duchy; he has Lady Diana, despite the fact that he would not do well in a Most Attractive Person competition against the average male his age, or, for that matter, any well-designed lawn tractor. He will in all likelihood become King of England, if he plays his cards right. He is extremely wealthy. And he regularly plays polo with people who wouldn't let you remove manure from their stables. So Prince Charles is successful. But does he go around in simple blue or brown or gray suits? Hardly. Prince Charles goes around dressed like Captain Fruit. He spends his life in a series of bizarre outfits, many of which involve kilts and swords. I recently saw a picture in which Charles and the Queen were riding around with little matching hats that had enormous feathers sticking out the top. Now you might have thought that the only way to get wealthy, powerful, famous people to wear enormous white feathers in their hats would be to order them to do so at gunpoint, but you are wrong. They were merely dressing for success. It is the same in all societies, even primitive tribes, as you know if you have seen any of the fine anthropological movies featuring Johnny Weismuller (or, lately, Bo Derek). The average tribesman wears a simple, conservative loincloth. But your really successful tribesman, your tribal leader, wears mud and paint all over his body, clamshells on the ear, bones through his nose, and feathers and beads and funny masks. He is the one they all look to for advice and guidance. He is the one who decides whether they should boil Maureen O'Sullivan or merely keep her in a cage. He is successful. All you have to do to see the accuracy of my thesis is look around you. Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making average incomes for doing average jobs -- bank vice presidents, insurance salesman, auditors, secretaries of defense -- and you'll realize they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins in the Sears menswear department dress. Now look at the real successes, the people who make a lot more money than you -- Elton John, Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on. They all dress funny -- and they all succeed. Are you catching on? The reason for all this is, of course, New York. Virtually every major cultural activity -- drama, music, literature, drug addiction -- takes its cues from New York, so naturally that's where fashions originate. New Yorkers have prided themselves on being ahead of the rest of the nation. Millions of years ago, when prehistoric people in the rest of North America were wearing filthy, insect-ridden bear skins, the prehistoric people in New York were wearing filthy, insect-ridden deer skins. When prehistoric out-of-towners came to New York wearing their bear skins, the New Yorkers would snicker at them, and charge them twice the usual number of beads to get into the popular caves. So if you want to dress for success, you have to keep your eye on New York. The trouble is, New Yorkers don't want us to succeed, so they send out many false signals. That was how they got the leisure suit fad started. It happened this way: About 10 years ago, a group of New Yorkers ingested a great many narcotics and sat down to design the ugliest garment imaginable, and they came up with the leisure suit, which was basically a pair of pajamas made with drapery fabric. Then they told everybody that leisure suits were extremely fashionable, and, by God, people actually bought them, and before long the nation looked like one huge polyester slumber party. Except, of course, in New York. Nobody in New York ever wore a leisure suit. What I'm getting at is that the dress-for-success-in-a-blue- or-brown-or-gray-suit concept that most of the nation believes in is just another shuck from Manhattan. But where the leisure-suit fraud primarily fooled people who wear their high school class rings because they don't have any more advanced rings to wear (if you get my drift), the blue-or-brown-or-gray-suit fraud is aimed at fooling almost everybody, including the members of the United States Senate. This is exactly what the New Yorkers wanted. Now, in an instant, they can tell who is successful, and who isn't. If you walk into a New York restaurant with Sears-mannequin-style clothing, the maitre d' immediately knows you belong to the United States Senate or hold some other mediocre job and gives you a table near the hole they sweep dead insects into. You don't believe this? Then answer this: Why is it that in New York City, which has more wealthy, successful people than any other city, you see so many people wearing wet-suits, orange bedsheets, armor, rags, football helmets, cardboard boxes, submarine uniforms and Santa Claus outfits? Coincidence, you say? Don't make me laugh. Of course, you won't do what I'm suggesting. You'll think: "Maybe he's right, but all the other guys in the office wear blue, brown or gray suits, and I'd look out of place in parachute fabric." And you'll keep on dressing the same old way. Which is okay with me. There are, after all, only so many duchies left, and nowhere near enough to go around. -- Gary Benson m/s232e -*- John Fluke Mfg Co Box C9090 -*- Everett WA 98206 USA {microsoft,allegra,ssc-vax,sun,sb1}{decvax,ihnp4,tektronix!uw-beaver}!fluke!inc -_-_-_-andthewordsoftheprophetswerewrittenonthesubwaywalls,tenementhalls-_-_-_-