Edited on Jun 22, 2026

Yes. Still.

Walk into a pitch meeting in a wrinkled shirt and you’ve lost half the room before you open your mouth. Walk in tailored, polished, deliberate — you have a different conversation. Same person. Different presentation. Different outcome.

This isn’t shallow. This is communications.

Everything about how you present is a signal. The fit of the suit. The shine on the shoes. The watch — or no watch. The haircut. The posture. The handshake. The first six seconds of every meeting are spent reading those signals. Most decisions — hire, don’t hire, sign, don’t sign — are made in those six seconds and then rationalized afterwards.

Same goes for brands. The first six seconds of a website. The first six seconds of a TV spot. The first six seconds of a CEO on camera. The signal sets the frame. The frame decides whether the message gets in.

The CEOs who understand this dress like CEOs. Not because they enjoy it. Because the wardrobe is a tool. Steve Jobs in the black turtleneck. Tom Wolfe in the white suit. Anna Wintour in the bob and the sunglasses. Each one is a brand uniform. Each one signals what the person is — instantly, before the person has said a word.

The same is true of every executive walking into a board meeting, a media interview, a client dinner. The clothes are doing communications work whether the executive has thought about it or not. The question is just whether the work is on-message.

This goes wrong in two directions.

Under-dressed sends a signal of casualness, indifference, or low status. Sometimes that signal is correct — the founder in the hoodie at a Series A is signaling builder, not banker. Sometimes it’s wrong — the executive in a polo at a tier-1 client meeting is signaling I-didn’t-prepare.

Over-dressed sends a signal of trying too hard, of mismatch, of not understanding the room. The forty-year-old in the three-piece suit at a Silicon Valley pitch meeting is announcing he’s the wrong person before he opens his mouth.

The right answer is calibrated, not maximal. Dress one level above the room. Land sharp. Stay consistent. The wardrobe should serve the brand, not compete with it.

This is the same logic that runs every other piece of brand reputation work. The press release. The website. The LinkedIn headline. The headshot. Each one is a wardrobe choice. Each one should land before the reader gets to the second sentence.

Most executives spend an hour a year thinking about how they present. They spend a hundred hours thinking about the deal. The math is upside down. The presentation is the deal — the deal is just the part that closes once the presentation has done its work. The same goes for any crisis PR moment: the clothes, the setting, the posture in the press conference are all carrying as much weight as the words.

Buy the suit. Get it tailored. Spend money on the haircut. Pick one watch and wear it. The wardrobe is the cheapest brand investment you will ever make.

Yes. Clothes still make the man.

Fifteen years on, the principle holds — the wardrobe has just expanded. The LinkedIn headline, the bylines, the headshot, the schema on your About page, the consistency across every property where your name appears. All of it is wardrobe. All of it is signaling to readers, buyers, journalists, and AI engines who you are before you say a word. Buy the suit. Then buy the digital wardrobe to match.

Ronn Torossian is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications, the AI Communications Firm. He is the publisher of Everything-PR and the author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release.