Timeless Tidiness

Styling your Corporate Wear is challenging. It is about following the company’s dress code while at the same time asserting your own stroke of fashion, fortified with your exemplary work performance. What I mean is, it is not merely dressing up sharply. It is about being known to do so, accompanied with your workmates’ admiration of  you being second to none in achieving your work goals. 

For almost eight years in Selling, the work wear fashion has really been changing – colors, patterns, fit and fabric type. Being someone who believes that I should dress according to how I want to be addressed, my office wear style has also bent with the blow of the windy corporate fashion trend. However, after all those years when most of the work wear hype just passed by, a timeless tidy piece stayed. My Selling garb which has remained glorious and has been my drape for the most defining deals of my Selling profession – The White Collar Dress Shirt. 

White in Selling

White as a color, owns a strategic appeal in dealing with people to begin with. Preserving its timeless tidy “whiteness” means preserving this appeal to keep you best in dealing with your prospects, towards winning new accounts. 

White is simple and smart which denotes a non-judgmental appeal. It assures the person you are meeting with that they are not prejudged in terms of the capacity of buying whatever is the tag in the display indicates. Being prejudged is the most apprehensive and annoying lurking a possible buyer should not ever feel. The pleasantness of White makes the prospect feel great spending time with you. Hence, enhancing your agreeability and engaging presence.

The “cleanliness” of White reflects credibility and conscientiousness too. This sends an assuring idea to the person you interact with that you know what you are doing and that you are doing it right. #TimelessStyle

How to keep a timeless tidy White Shirt

1. CHOOSE THE COMFORTABLE FABRIC. Wearing white gives you that mild anxiety of being stained. That is part of the choice of wearing a tidy office wear. An ease from this is to choose a fabric that gives you comfort while in White. Choose those which are light and breathable like Linen and incorporated Cotton like the Oxford. Choose also those which are easier or do not need ironing. Recent offerings in the market now are those which are “super non iron”, “easy iron” and “wrinkle resistant”.
2. OWN TWO OR EVEN MORE OF THE SAME STYLE. One of the style tricks Don Draper of Mad Men taught me is to own a lot of white corporate shirts and stock these both at the office and at your closet at home. White never sends the idea that you repeatedly wore the same shirt when you have properly took care of its “same as new” whiteness. Thus, it is ideal to own more even of the same style.
3. TREAT STAINS STAT. May it be a blood stain from a scratch, a pen’s ink or even that stain from after work eat out or booze, I always see to it to soak it with water and detergent as soon as I get home. Leave it overnight before finally washing it.
4. SORT THE TYPES OF FABRIC WHEN WASHING. Group properly the types of clothes you are washing so that when it comes to drying, the garments are not damaged and still keep their shape. NEVER MIX white shirts with colored garments when washing. Some colored garments may not stain but their strands/ lint may still stick to the white shirt when dried. Removing these can be both time and emotionally consuming.
5. DOUBLE CHECK. Check the papers left in pockets especially those which stains when wet like the colored calling card and colored post-its. Check also for candy wrappers. Be sure to also remove the collar sticks and other office supplies made from metal or any ink that might lead to staining or tear when washing. 
6. SKIP IRONING or at least de-wrinkle as natural as possible. When I wear it with a blazer, I choose not to press iron it at all. Pressing contributes discoloration to the white shirt base on my perception especially when you are not oriented with the ideal temperature of the electric iron for a specific white piece.
   

   

   Choosing a washing machine with a technology that alleviates the wrinkling of garments is a big help too.

   

The Vapour Care feature of Electrolux is a helpful consideration when owning a new washing machine. The vapour action dewrinkles your clothes by relaxing the fibres. It does this with the vapour generated by heating your shirts with a small quantity of water #ElectroluxFashionCare

Preserving your white shirt’s timeless tidy version means preserving its classic strategic effect in dealing with people. Anyone can wear white. But not  everyone who wears it can keep its timeless tidy version. You can name only some but it takes time.

Author: John Llamas

John is a millennial Closer behind www.johndappercloser.com. He writes about the Corporate lifestyle, Sales tips, Menswear and Davao city's Bleisure scene. Join his Closer-to-CEO journey on Facebook and Instagram, @johndappercloser. View all posts by John Llamas