Business attire

“ In the greater shops are models whose business it is to "show off" the gown the shopkeeper wishes to sell by wearing it before the possible purchaser. The advantage of the plan is obvious. We must show truth in the wear to make it understood! ”

“ I let men—who were in the business simply to make money, and who knew how to do it!—tell me that my furs must be recut, or changed, and my jewels reset, and my wardrobe restocked and my furniture carried away and replaced. ”

“ From one side comes the Man of the World--Man of Business-- Business Manager. Silk hat, dress coat, white waistcoat, shiny shirt, patent boots, and big cigar; he's very smart and prosperous indeed. From the other side come the four poor gods, out of work buskers of the streets, down at heel and weary. But still gods, and with a god-like snap of ill-temper to them for you to know them by. ”

“ You observe things very much out of place—frills and ruffles and ill-darned stockings—fine bonnets and clouted shoes—silk gowns and dirty petticoats; while the husband goes about ragged and torn, with scarcely a clean thing about him.
Industry is of course essential. This is the soul of business; but, without method, industry will be less productive. ”

“ Silk shirts with soft collars, and Windsor ties, bought by Rose-Ann, and approved by Clive, helped still more.
After all, if the management liked his work, if he was no longer on trial, but an accepted person, privileged to do about as he pleased, why should he maintain his old anxieties and disguises? Why try to look like an efficient young business man? Nobody wanted him to! Why not be comfortable, in a soft collar and homespun clothes? ”

“ They speak of limited commerce united with a social or observing disposition—on the part of the shopkeeper,—allowing, as they do, talk with passers-by, yet keeping off such as have not the excuse of business to cross the threshold. ”

“ Where more care to appear in the foremost box with greater advantage of dress. Where more meetings for business, where more bargains are driven, and where so many conveniences and enticements to sleep? ”

“ But the general talking point may be extended, or rather restricted, so as to make an appeal to men along the lines of their exclusive experience:
Clothes are the outward index of the inner man.
The business man who dresses so as to show his inherent neatness and orderliness has just that much advantage over his less careful competitors. ”

“ If fashions are chosen wisely, with a regard for simplicity; if, in fact, clothes are chosen for good cut and line material rather than attractive style, the business woman will soon find that she is gaining a reputation for being at all times well-dressed. ”

“ It is hard enough to get along [Pg 82] with authors and artists and musicians. The business man who is wise wears conventional clothes of substantial material in conservative colors. Good sense and good taste demand it. ”

“ Outside of the office or shop she may meet and treat her employer as a fellow citizen and member of society, under the common rights of citizenship and the proper social rules, but in business hours she should obey the strict ethics of business. Thus she may don what dress she will when her work is done, adopt all the eccentricities of fashion she pleases, but she should wear with cheerfulness, and even pride, the simple dress prescribed, for good and sufficient reasons, as her working costume. ”

“ Remember that while you feel perfectly at home in the store, few customers do. It is your business to put them at ease and certainly to do nothing to make them uncomfortable.
“When a man comes in for a suit of clothes he usually has some sort of a mental picture of the thing he desires. An idea, clearly defined or hazy, is in his mind as to the general color and effect of the suit he wants. ”

“ Beware of strangers that come to you full of smooth talk and clad in fine clothing. The tree, book, land and other agents sometimes prove helpful. But you will be happier and more prosperous, if you will send for a catalog and get just what you need, and at cost. You will thereby avoid the expensiveness and uncertainty of doing business through a nicely dressed, but irresponsible stranger. ”

“ "True business can never be left in any shop. It is a care, white or black, that sits behind every horseman." ”

“ Lady merchants can to some extent control the taste of the community where they are; for such articles as they purchase and keep on hand will be likely to find sale. The taste of the best keepers of dry-goods and fancy stores, millinery establishments, and embroidery shops will be displayed in the dress of their patrons. To merchandize extensively, requires much experience and knowledge of business ”

“ The dress of a gentleman in the present day should not cost him more than the tenth part of his income on an average. But as fortunes vary more than position, if his income is large it will take a much smaller proportion, if small a larger one. If a man, however, mixes in society, and I write for those who do so, there are some things which are indispensable to even the proper dressing, and every occasion will have its proper attire. ”

“ Set a business going, and it is astonishing how long it will continue to move by the force of mere daily routine. People flocked in for shirts and stockings, and young women came there to seek their gloves and ribbons, although but little was done to attract them, either in the way of advertisement or of excellence of supply. ”

“ On the way, a great many demanded it, read it, and passed on. Those having the air and appearance of gentlemen, whose dress indicated the possession of wealth, frequently took no notice of me whatever; but a shabby fellow, an unmistakable loafer, never failed to hail me, and to scrutinize and examine me in the most thorough manner. Catching runaways is sometimes a money-making business. ”

“ The milliner who makes the dress is as much a servant (more so, in that she uses more intelligence in the service) as the maid who puts it on; the carpenter who smooths the door, as the foot-man who opens it; the tradesmen who supply the table, as the labourers and sailors who supply the tradesmen. ”

“ She buys other materials, too, laces, buttons, novelties of all kinds, that will enable her to achieve frocks differing from those of her rivals, and skilful Parisian buying is to-day a very vital part of the fashionable American dressmaker's business. ”

“ A woman, with two or three more to chorus her sentiments, would go into a shop and examine half-a-dozen dress fabrics, rubbing each between her work-hardened fingers and thumb till the shopkeeper winced, expecting to see it torn. ”

“ Our salesman is careful with his appearance. He bathes and shaves every morning and takes special care that his linen is clean and that his shoes are polished. He does not ornament himself with a lot of jewelry, and the material of which his suit is made is plain. He presents, if you should see him on the street, the appearance of a clean, solid, healthy, progressive American citizen. He is poised but he is not aggressive. He is persistent but he is not obstinate. ”

“ Not too much furniture and apparatus; no coach, no horses! Nothing but money, and the liberty, day after day, to do what you like in reason. No wardrobe; still the best and newest on your back: the man may wear his coat till it is done; the wife may truck her gown, the moment it is going out of fashion. There is nothing so unsufferable to me as an old huckster's shop of property. ”

“ Remember this, dear, the tag of the maker of your apparel is not the only important mark of an exclusive shop—the principal mark is the cut and style, and these high-grade shops turn out hats, coats and gowns which the other shops endeavor in vain to imitate. That is why one can be recognized in a way by the clothes they wear. ”

“ The tailor, with fresh-ground shears, and perfect faith in the gentility and solvency of his “client,” snips, and snips, and snips, until the “superfine” grows, with each abscission, into the first style of elegance and fashion, and the excited schneider feels himself “every inch a king,” his shop a herald’s college, and every brown paper pattern garnishing its walls, an escutcheon of gentility. ”

“ In business pursuits, there are 40 boot and shoe makers, 40 retail grocers, 75 draymen, 25 hackmen, 20 blacksmiths, 12 barbers, 2 tailors, several boarding-house keepers, 2 caterers, 5 confectioners, 3 dealers in fruits, 1 dentist, 1 undertaker, 1 veterinary surgeon, 1 mattrass maker, and 1 billiard-table keeper. ”

“ It contained a rustic-looking young man, dressed in new and showy garments that had the cachet of the department store, and a young woman brave in such finery as young women wear when approaching the most important hour of their lives. ”

“ "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faultered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" ”

“ Why, supposing you find a block of women on the pavement opposite a shop, you may bet ten thousand to one that that shop is a dress-maker's, or a seller of women's clothes. They stand glued to the glass like flies on fly paper, thinking how sweet they would look in that eight guinea walking dress. ”

“ If it was my business, I wouldn’t talk about it. [Begins to eat muffins.] It is very vulgar to talk about one’s business. Only people like stock-brokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties. ”

“ The weaver, the shoemaker, the tailor, the barber, has the impudence, with the first money he gets, to dress himself like a tradesman of substance; the ordinary retailer, in the clothing of his wife, takes pattern from his neighbor, that deals in the same commodity by wholesale, and the reason he gives for it is, that, twelve years ago, the other had not a bigger shop than himself. ”

“ That's the skirt business to-day. There aren't enough chairs to go round, and in the scramble somebody's got to be left out. And let me tell you, here and now, that the firm of T. A. Buck, Featherloom Petticoats, is not going to be It. ”

“ Our public hands have hats, coats, vests, shirts, garments, pantaloons, shoes, &c.; who buys these articles of clothing? They have to be bought and the money paid for them. The wives and children of our work-hands are well and comfortably clothed ”

“ Gentlemen consider it a very irksome task to go on shopping expeditions, and their ill-concealed impatience becomes equally irksome to you.
If you have given the salesman or saleswoman unusual trouble in showing you articles which you find not to suit, make some compensation, by at least one or two small purchases before leaving the store; for instance, linen to lay by as a body-lining for a future dress, gloves, mits, a neck ribbon, cotton spools, pins, needles, tape, black sewing-silk, &c.,—things that will always come into use. ”

“ Fashion folks need money from all of us to keep their lovely shops going, so hunt around, find the shop that has things becoming to you, then buy or copy them as your purse dictates, and study fashion magazines and shop windows as you would a speller at a “spelling bee.” ”

“ You may, in the course of your trade, have accommodated yourself to twenty different fashions, and have served twenty classes of customers; have copied at one time a Parisian, at another a London fashion, and have truckled to the humours, now of a precise enthusiast, and now of a smart free-thinker. ”

“ We had on one occasion just begun sewing for a tailor who was considered to be of the better class,—that is, one who kept a shop in a fashionable street, and sold a finer and better description of goods than were to be found in the slop-shops,—and while making up a dozen fine vests, were congratulating ourselves on having advanced a step in our profession. ”

“ It was observed that upon entering a shop here the customer invariably removes his hat out of respect to the store-keeper, whether man or woman, and remains thus uncovered while perfecting his purchase. ”

“ Is the time coming when general dealers in apparel and gents' furnishing goods for the use of bare facts, and men who attend to the costuming, draping, and swaddling of nude ideas, will compete so closely with each other that, before a think has its eyes fairly open, one of these gentlemen will slap a suit of clothes on it, with a Waterbury watch in each pocket, and have a boy half way to the office with the bill? ”

“ The saleswomen were aided by young women, evidently selected for their height and good figures, whose duty it was to continually whip on a dress or mantle, and promenade back and forth before the purchasers. By these shrewd manœuvres, many a fat dowager or dumpy woman of wealth was induced to purchase an elegant garment, which, upon the lithe, undulating figure of a girl of twenty was a thing of grace and beauty, thinking it would have the same effect upon herself. ”

“ They bring their own outfit—cards, score, and the light, collapsible tables that are easily carried; or these may be sent beforehand to the house of the hostess. Occasionally an enterprising member of the society brings some of her own handiwork and offers it for sale, thus netting an additional sum for the charitable enterprise. ”

“ Specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in the professions, but are often narrowing to individuals. The spirit of the age tends to doom the lawyer to a narrow life of practice, the business man to a mere money-making career. ”

“ The business man, who happened at the time to be in New York to engage a sales manager for his company, later remarked that the part played was the exact type of man needed in his business. In other words, he had in his mind the picture of the man needed and, relying on his past experience, he associated ability with the man’s own respect for himself as shown by his appearance.
37 THE KNACK OF BEING WELL DRESSED To be well dressed does not necessarily mean that a person must be expensively dressed. ”

“ Some of the articles of clothing seem to represent in themselves the heterogeneousness of a jumble sale, and all are cheap, shoddy, and shapeless. And yet this pair of feminine philanthropists show all comers round the room where they are exhibited with sparkling eyes and faces glowing with proper pride at the result of their industry. They worry the local newspapers for a paragraph that shall make all the world acquainted with their benevolence, and now and again their importunity is rewarded. ”