Dress To Impress (Who?)

The phrase ‘dress to impress’ highlights the fact that we often think about clothes as more than just shelter from the weather. Even by just throwing on whatever is clean we are sending out signals to others about who we are and how we want to be seen by others. We try and take control over our personal image and align ourselves with certain sections of society.

The Times recently published an article called ‘How To Dress To Please Men‘ which suggested that when women dress their main concern is impressing other women. The idea being that women are far to wrapped up in what other women think about them to give a damn what men think. Or perhaps they just want to feel better about themselves (by impressing other women). The main advice the author Lisa Armstrong had was to not wear weird hybrids such as ‘shoe sandals’ or bizarrely, ‘sock-shoes’. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sock-shoe but it doesn’t sound like something that would impress anybody with working eyes.

Clearly if women want to impress men confusing footwear hybrids are not the way forward. As one commenter on the Times site says: ‘women always make the mistake of putting clothes on, to attract a man’. No man is going to notice who made your handbags and while we may not complain when you buy beauty products we really don’t think you need them.

Cheryl Cole was recently voted the world sexiest woman and she isn’t exactly known as the most fashion forward/ cutting edge dresser. Somehow most men would rather you wore this (or even this):

Than this:

But you probably don’t care what we think.