Do Clothes Still Make the Man or Woman?
by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com
As I was packing for the License Expo in Las Vegas in May, I put a suit and a sports jacket into my luggage.
The first day, Monday, was pick-up-your-badge day along with a showcase by a film studio, so I went casual. Everyone had the same idea. It’s Vegas in May so it’s warm … you don’t need many clothes.
The show floor opened on Tuesday so I wore my suit and dress shirt though I did skip the tie. It turns out that I was very overdressed. I wore the sports jacket for the rest of the show. (Drew Maniscalco is the only other person I can count on to be wearing a suit and tie.)
For years at IAAPA, I wore a suit and tie every day. It’s a good look and says that you are ready to do business. It’s also worth noting that it always goes over well with the international customers.
At the IAAPA show last fall, my first day was suit and tie as planned, then it was a dress shirt and sports jacket for day two. I still kept it professional on the third day, but chose a dress shirt with our company logo. By the fourth day, my thinking is that most people are too pooped to care what anyone’s wearing and any people you wanted to impress were probably long gone. Still, I did wear a Jersey Jack Pinball t-shirt.
It wasn’t that long ago that men routinely dressed up for any business meeting or trade show. Going further back, men would wear a suit and tie to a baseball game. Really, they did! I remember my grandfather would always wear a dress shirt and a tie even if he was lounging around the house and when he went out, he wore a fedora.
Dressing up makes most people feel good. A new outfit can lift your spirits. It can help you to get noticed. What you wear makes a statement, especially for a first time meeting.
With the work from home hangover from Covid, many people stopped feeling the need to dress up for work. When I’m not traveling, I’m working from home on video calls. Let me be clear: Along with my shirt with my company logo (it’s important to represent!), I am wearing pants! I have seen some people wear pajamas.
Back to that Las Vegas trip, I saw a bride wearing white sneakers and the tuxedo-wearing members of the bridal party wearing sneakers as well. As much as I value the time-honored traditions of what to wear in various circumstances, I remember (painfully) struggling with dress shoes. Say what you will, but I think this bride and her party have the better idea: comfort over tradition!
Today, pretty much anything goes. But even in the summer down the Jersey Shore, signs on the store windows say, “No shirt, no shoes, no service” so you have to wear something! (And I’d say your “birthday suit” isn’t going to cut it!) When it comes to business today, how much does someone’s dress affect how seriously you take them?
Jack Guarnieri started servicing electro-mechanical pinball machines in 1975 and has been involved in every phase of the amusement game business since then. He was an operator in NYC, then began a distributorship in 1999, PinballSales.com, selling coin-op to the consumer market. In January of 2011, he founded Jersey Jack Pinball (named after his RePlay Magazine pen name), which builds award-winning, full-featured, coin-op pinball machines. Email Jack at jack@jerseyjackpinball.com.