Confidence in the Workplace
Quality corporate apparel is important for many reasons. It's one of the ways that you, and your employees present your brand to the public and it helps build brand awareness. It’s also a great gift to employees and customers. All of this is obvious, but all too often, businesses fail to understand that corporate apparel won't bring their businesses benefits unless they do it right.
Ill-fitting, low-quality apparel can backfire on a business, and not just because it presents a bad image of the company. Workers who are forced to wear apparel that doesn't fit their bodies properly can take a big confidence hit. Clothing can provide the wearer with a confidence boost or drag confidence down depending on a person's perception of how they look and how they feel.
This interesting article in the Washington Post analyzes the way that what a person wears can affect how confident they feel in the job they are doing. The article notes that "...leaders should think through dress codes or workplace fashion norms not just in terms of how employees’ attire is perceived by others, but how it makes the employees themselves feel, too. “It reminds people that clothes aren’t just a device of perception, but a tool that can really affect how you perceive yourself,” Galinsky says. Clothes may not make the man, the saying goes. But as the authors write, “they do hold a strange power over their wearers.”
A lot of corporate apparel is made based on outdated notions of style and fit and using a unisex sizing model that is based on the male figure. The narrow range of sizes available can leave both men and women feeling uncomfortable, but women in particular are being left out.
We have a different approach at American Fashion Network. We offer a wider range of sizes for both sexes, including special sizing, like maternity. Our clothing is made to fit individuals, not theoretical unisex groups.
We believe that confidence is important, and we believe that clothing affects confidence. That's the philosophy we take into our product design, and it's the philosophy that drives our line of corporate apparel. When you buy your corporate apparel from us, you'll get a product that will make your business look good, and your workers feel good. And good workers are more productive and effective workers!