Posted on: Monday, April 21, 2003

Casual attire out, executive image in

By Jackie White
Knight Ridder News Service

You see them everywhere: big floral prints, backless shoes, rock-chic metallics, low-cut pants and high-cropped skirts.

You can't miss them in the fashion magazines and stores this spring.

But do you head out for work every day in peasant blouses, mules, silver belts and thigh-high girly-girl dresses? Unless you work for MTV, an art gallery or a hip creative department for an advertising agency, don't even think about it.

Even in the era of business casual and dress-down Fridays, serious times call for keeping the focus on a professional image perhaps more than ever before.

The question becomes this: How do you look modern, up-to-date, youthful and professional all at once? Appropriateness and moderation are keys.

"I cannot believe how short the skirts are on the New York streets," says an indignant Susan Bixler, an Atlanta-based image consultant. Bixler is author of "Five Steps to Professional Presence: How to Project Confidence, Competence and Credibility at Work."

The working woman, she says, has to "sit back and decide what she wants to be." If she uses words such as "credible," "appropriate" and "professional," she goes one route. If it is "sexy, fun and outrageous," she takes another.

That's important, especially because women still get paid less than men for equivalent jobs.

"When we buy into diminishing our credibility, we're part of the problem and not the solution," Bixler says.

Certainly the workplace has changed in the past two years. Jobs are lost. The dot-coms are gone. People are trying to appear focused. They want to keep their jobs. And businesses have begun reversing the dress code away from business casual and back to more traditional corporate attire. Even on dress-down days, images are shifting away from khakis and loafers to a polished facade.

"We're talking about dressing for survival in a big world," says Kim Johnson Gross, co-author of the how-to book "Dress Smart: Wardrobes That Win in the New Workplace," part of the Chic Simple series.

"Fashion is really inappropriate when you are in the corporate culture," Gross says. "Unless you are in the fashion industry — and most people are not in that industry — it is inappropriate."

Perhaps most important, she adds, "clothes should not talk louder than you do."