DO the clothes make the person

Do the clothes make the person? 

Each day I wake up, I choose what to wear. Almost every day, I make the same simple choice to wear the same shoes, a T-shirt and the old washed-out jeans. This outfit isn't ‘attractive’ and requires no effort to assembly each morning, but it's comfortable, which means more to me than anything else. The clothes I choose to wear send various messages to the people around me. People make judgements of who I am over the clothes I choose to wear, but my clothes have nothing to do with who I am.

Most people usually think that our wardrobe can say a lot about us as part of the society. What we wear can inform to the most people about our type of employment, as well as our ambitions, emotions and spending habits; even a new type of psychology has been created around this, it’s called "psychology of dress." Clinical psychologist Dr. Jennifer Baumgartner wrote a book called "You Are What You Wear: What Your Clothes Reveal About You," she explains not only how psychology determines our clothing choices, but also how they are extremely related with who we are.

Following this idea, can we use our wardrobe to change how others perceive us, or how we think about ourselves? It’s correct, we live in a superficial society, and sometimes these thoughts beat our real personality completely and many people end up living for the critics and opinions they could inspire to others.

Nowadays, first impressions of people are often very important, but the judgements that are usually formed within the first few seconds may or may not be completely accurate. I think we should look beyond the fact that we live in a judgmental age, we are able of stand against the stereotypes which have formed our minds since we were born, but we are always creating another ones, we are always looking other people and conditioning them. It’s part of our nature.

Even if clothing, footwear, accessories and body make up are usually associated with elegance, class beauty and distinction that highlights your physicality and looks to bring out the best appearance. Through the time the way of clothing has been significant, our entire system has been defined and delimited by particular roles that apparently have their own way of look. In our time people want to break free from these labels, especially teenagers and young adults whose open minds result to be more exposed and tolerant to the diversity.

I accept the fact that almost everything is predetermined now, people don’t care about your real personality or what you could represent as a person; we have designed certain ways of clothing in different places and situations, everything has been created around our cultural and living terms, for example; it would be impolite if someone go to a funeral wearing an outfit with vivid colors, or if a man wears an expensive suit in a shit-hole disco, probably he will be in trouble once he leaves. However, we just can accept that we have nothing to do with all this system, and even if we can look people beyond their clothing, we’ll be always judging in some way.

...