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CONSUMING PASSIONS
Turn the Other Chic

Wherein dress-for-success books get a good dressing down. 
BY MIMI SWARTZ

The writes of best-selling dress-for-success books see the American workplace as a hostile, foreign world. Their pitch goes like this: The ambitious woman cannot afford to jeopardize her chances for advancements by trusting her own judgements where clothes are concerned; she needs an expert to guide her from the sale rack to the executive suite. 
The book that started it all in 1977 is John T. Molloy's The Woman's Dress for Success Book (Warner Books, $6.95). Molloy believes attractive women cannot be authoritative. Because they still view themselves as sex objects, they should let scientific research - his scientific research - help them choose their clothes. Molloy's advice, costing "several hundred thousand dollars": Women should wear a uniform of highly tailored, dark-colored, traditionally designed suits to the office. So it's not surprising that Molloy's examples bear a stronger resemblance to Soviet style tour guides than to confident, stylish executives.

Mimi Swartz last wrote for Savvy on the etiquette of toasting ("Here's to You," June 1983).

Molloy's book is patronizing, arbitrary ("Sweaters in the office spell secretary"), and pathologically class conscious ("My research shows that a woman wearing a black raincoat is definitely not automatically categorized as lower middle class"). Though he does remind the forgetful reader whose side the fashion industry is on, his guide is hopelessly out of date. Women who seriously consider following Molloy's dictates on dressing to land a job or a man (he offers both) should note that on page 174 The great Dresser crows about buying a leisure suit.
Not content merely to dress women in the bedroom and the boardroom, Emily Cho and Hermine Lueders' Looking, Working, Living Terrific 24 Hours a Day (Ballantine Fawcett, $6.95) promises even more: Helping people "get their image together," the authors believe, is "the faster, more direct route to help[ing] them feel better about themselves." This is a manual long on philosophy and short on concrete information (though I was glad to learn that Cher and Carol Burnett are the same size). The authors present some attractive alternatives to Molloy's uniform,

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Mimi Swartz last wrote for Savvy on the etiquette of toasting ("Here's to You." June 1983).

however: "Ordinary suits fail you in two ways. They carry no clout and they're not even much fun." Cho and Lueders also tell the reader how to determine the quality of a garment, how to distinguish between different types of sales, and suggest some off-beat places to look for bargains. But like Molloy, Cho and Lueders leave the reader assuming expensive is always better. And much of their advice is shrill and obvious: "Don't come in scuffed shoes or bare legs or stockings with a run in them. Don't wear open-toe sandals showing reinforced hose. Don't wear anything with a spot on it, a hem coming down, a loose or missing button."
Taking a cue from Molloy's "scientific" approach, Carole Jackson, author of the blockbuster paperback 'Color Me Beautiful' (Ballantine Fawcett, $8.95), contends that every woman alive today can wear one of only four palettes, depending on her coloring. In Jackson's book, you're either an autumn (fall colors), a spring ("delicate colors with warm yellow overtones"), a winter (the primary colors), or a summer ("the soft colors of sea and sky"). 
Could you be more than one season? Jackson says no, no, no: "You will look best in one palette, and your makeup goes with one palette." I was not converted by Jackson's before-and-after color photographs, her 'National Enquirer' role model list (Cher is a winter, Princess Grace was a summer, Joan Kennedy is a spring), or her assertion that most black and Oriental women are winters. Fortunately, skeptics won't suffer immeasurably: "Take heart," says the author. "Nature usually prevails, and chances are good that at least 50 percent of your clothes are the right colors."
Like Molloy, Jackson assumes her readers are dizzy dames: "If you color your hair, try to remember its natural color." And once readers have their colors straight, she's off on another round of stereotyping, helping the reader determine whether her "clothing personality" is classic, romantic, sporty, or dramatic. Jackson's illustrations can help a woman learn to determine the best clothing for her figure, and she occasionally provides a grain of good old-fashioned command sense ("When in doubt, don't buy"), but the useful advice is as scarce as a ruffle on one of John T. Molloy's uniforms.
Amelia Fatt's Conservative Chic (Times Books, $9.95) also has no frills, literally and figuratively. The writer promises no instant transformations, only that her reader will be able to develop a wardrobe that will not have to be replaced every season. No one will ever accuse you of being trendy in Fatt's outfits; she advocates an aggressively conservative, Wall Street banker style. But Conservative Chic is the best primer for the woman who simply wants to know how to dress herself, largely because Fatt doesn't treat the reader like a ninny. Though the book suffers from acute categoritis (exhaustive chapters on the six most common types of coats, the seven basic types of dresses, the six different kinds of blouses... ad nauseam), Fatt's advice is practical without being condescending: She tells how to care for clothes to make them last, how to invent designer-like garments when you can't afford a designer, how to hem pants so they go with every pair of shoes. And her approach is refreshingly free of cant. "What about all those color theories people are talking about?" she asks. "Do the colors really look best on you, or are you just feeling relieved that someone else made the choice?"
Having someone else make the choice is, of course, the secret of these success books' success. It is unfortunate that women have to dress a certain way to be taken seriously by everyone from gas station attendants to senior executives; those who are unwilling or unable to accomplish this goal on their own can learn something from Fatt and, more painfully, from Cho and Lueders. But women who need advice on what to wear generally also need confidence and encouragement. The patronizing, humorless tone of most dress-for-success books undercuts whatever good suggestions lie between the covers, tapping and reinforcing the age-old insecurities women have always had about their judgment and their bodies.
If you enjoy choosing your own clothes and feel confident about your taste, if you retained half of what you learned about grooming from home economics class, or if you pay the slightest attention to fashion magazines, you do not need these books. Buy a nice scarf instead.

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February 1984/Savvy 83