Friday, February 3, 2012

Time to play dress up

I have invested some serious time in the last 48 hours doing something I haven't done in quite a while:  Buy clothes.

A flashback -- before I got into radio, I sold suits at May D&F department store in Denver, Colorado.  It was 1986 and I had a closet full of suits at the age of 19.  I wore one to work every day.  Then, I got into the radio business.  A vast majority of people who are radio dj's are casual dressers.  If I wore a suit every day it would have looked like I wanted to work in the sales department.  So, I dressed casually.  The only time I wore a suit was at a rare event that required it or for a job interview.


It never seemed to be needed to dress up most of the time.  Even in radio at events where I'd interact with clients I'd usually be wearing something with the station logo and it didn't seem like I needed to get fancy with what I was wearing.  If you're standing in 100 degree heat at a car dealership wearing a dress shirt, slacks and dress shoes it almost seems ridiculous.  On the rare occasions I did dress up everyone around me was shocked that I owned dress shoes and dress shirts.

I moved into television in October and asked what the appropriate attire is for being a news producer.  I was told what I was wearing was fine... if I wanted to wear shorts, do it on the weekend.  More casual attire.

Now I'm going to be an executive producer.  It was time to buy some new dress shirts, multiple pairs of slacks, new dress shoes.  I should look the exective part!

I'm looking forward to starting my new job on Monday and looking spiffy.