Independent Project Brief Draft 3 and Survey

Independent Project

Project Title

Dress for Success or Comfort

Comfort or Benefits

Professional Conformity in Way of Dressing

Professional Clothing Comformity

Introduction

Bruton, S., (2015) discussed how some companies uses look based hiring to boost their business. Even though his subject was more about the physiques of a person rather than how they dressed, stated that research proven that beautiful people tend to find it easier to get hired and work. Patrick W. Dune, (2020) on the other hand discussed how dressing for success proven true based on studies made. He mentioned a lot of studies where men and women were separated in groups to be dressed casually and luxury to do tasks that involved engaging with people. It was observed that the ones who were well dressed and wore branded clothes had more success and better treatment. Mathis, E., (2019) also talked about how she helps people build up a new image for themselves based on how they dress so that they get to express themselves better. She also claimed that the people she has helped got a boost in their lives, people started to approach them more easily and this opened more opportunities for them. This project will investigate in how judgemental the society is and try to see it as a form of inequality and see what people thinks.

Brief

People are constantly being judged on how they look, it is known that first impression play a huge role in securing a job, but what if qualified people cannot make a first good impression because of their way of dressing. This project dives in the issue of people judging other people based on their clothing choices from a different perspective and see if it is an unfair treatment. The project also aims to make people see this issue as a form of inequality and make them reflect whether they should adhere to society norms and expectation rather than being comfortable when it comes to clothing choices. The project will use strong visuals to convey this idea and the information obtained from surveys in the form of a book that will aims to open a discussion on this topic on social medias, thus making the project discursive and informational. A lot of imagery will be used both photographic and illustrative, to create impacting visual for the audience to communicate the ideas and message with more emotions. Die cuts, pop up or AR maybe used accordingly to create an experience for the audience as well.

Research Methods

A survey will be shared to gather people’s opinions on how they dress and what they think about “dress for success”. The survey will also collect information on people’s judgement of different clothing styles by displaying images of different people with their faces cropped so as to prevent people from judging based on facial features. The survey will also collect information on people who have experienced being treated differently by dressing up in different styles to do a follow up interview. The interview will then dive in deeper into how that made the person in question feel and think and also gather information of whether or not they were comfortable wearing the type of clothes that made people treat them better. Another experiment will be done by writing a post in a few groups on Facebook and ask them if they find it unfair that some people are treated better than other just based on their choice of clothes and what are their thoughts.

Audience

The targeted audience will be young adults of age 19 to 30. People of around this age are usually still new to the working life or looking for jobs. Many are probably not aware how much influence their clothing style can have on people’s opinion and probably would not think that dressing up better could make people treat them better as mentioned by Dune, P (2020). Should they be wearing something that they feel comfortable in or something that will change their image for the better, but they might not like is totally their choice to make. They are the one who are directly involved with the subject this project wants to bring up. The proof that clothes influence people judgement is already out there, but this project aims to bring up the question of whether people should dress up to please others or for their own comfort.

Deliverables

The final product will be a book or independent magazine that display the information received during the research and bring out the question of whether people should dress comfortably or adhere to society norms to get benefits in their working life. The book will use a lot of image manipulation and illustration to attempt to create impacting visuals for the audience that it will be targeting who are young adults of age 19 to 30. The aim is to inform the targeted audience about the fact that people tends to treat people who dress well better and make them reflect about whether it I fair or not. He book or magazine should stand out from other books and magazine in a creative way by either using AR, die cuts or pop up or simply playing with the contents inside by making each pages unique and bold.

Timeline

Resources

Bruton, S., 2015. Looks-Based Hiring and Wrongful Discrimination. Business and Society Review, 120(4), pp.607-635.

Dunne, P., 2020. Here’s Why Dressing For Success Actually Works. [online] Thriveglobal.com. Available at: <https://thriveglobal.com/stories/heres-why-dressing-for-success-actually-works/> [Accessed 30 September 2021].

Mathis, E., 2019. The Power of Image to Transform your Life | Erin Mathis | TEDxOhloneCollege. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbt2ri2a6Kk> [Accessed 26 September 2021].

Survey

https://forms.gle/Q9VCuJ7FJZjfAr1z8