How to Choose Your Professional Headshot Outfit
Let’s face it: first impressions matter.
Beyond a firm handshake and a polished resume, your professional headshot is what will provide potential employers, clients, and partners their first glimpse of who you are. So how do you portray yourself as competent, trustworthy, and likeable? Clothes.
Studies have shown that what we wear can have an impact on how others perceive us. Just by our clothing choices, we communicate information about who we are, how confident we are, and even how dominant we may be. So, what should you wear for your professional headshot? Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about dressing to impress for your professional portraits.
What Should You Wear?
There is no cookie-cutter approach to professional attire. If you are a lawyer preparing to argue your next big case in court, you will most likely dress much different than if you were a graphic designer preparing for a presentation at an ad agency.
When picking out your outfit for your professional headshot, think about what you do day to day and how you want to present yourself to clients and colleagues. Do you look up to certain people that tend to dress on the more formal side? Mimic their style. Do most of your clients come to work wearing Hawaiian shirts? Maybe follow their lead.
Dress One Level Up
When in doubt, dress one level above what you would normally wear in the office. This even applies to you startup entrepreneurs who wear leggings and t-shirts to work every day. If you’re typically dress-coded casual, that doesn’t mean you can’t throw on a nice button-up shirt for your headshot.
Studies have shown that wearing “power clothes” can actually make you feel more powerful and in control. If that’s how you want your clients and colleagues to perceive you when looking at your photos, then wearing an outfit that makes you feel confident is key.
Get Tailored
Depending on your line of work, you may find yourself meeting with all sorts of people. If you find yourself spending half your day in the board room and half of your day on a college campus, you may want consider shooting two separate headshots with two different outfits.
For example, if you own your own business, you may want to wear a suit jacket and dress pants for the headshot that will be used for more formal networking events and cocktail parties. You may then want to utilize a polo shirt and dress shorts for headshots that will be used when meeting with clients or giving presentations.
Suit Up
Clothing that is typically seen as more masculine (think: slacks vs. jeans, a blazer vs. a hoodie,or a dark suit jacket vs. a sweater) can affect how others perceive your dominance and competence. In fact, a study done in 2014 had participants interview each other for a jobposition. They were more likely to accept a job from the person wearing a suit than from the person who wore casual clothes.
Although you shouldn’t feel like you have to wear a suit just because you are having professional headshots taken, don’t be afraid to embrace your inner suit-wearing self.
Remember the Little Things
That beat up old t-shirt you got from your favorite band’s last tour? Leave it at home. Wearing clothing that is faded or wrinkled can make you lose credibility with your audience. No matter how cool ripped up jeans are right now, you don’t want your viewer to look at your photo andfocus on how faded your jeans are or how your sweater has started to pill.
Fresh is great. If you typically only wear that sweater on Sundays when you don’t feel like putting on real pants, you shouldn’t wear it for your headshot. Stick to clothing that you would be okay labeling “dry clean only.”
Keep Your Jewelry Subtle
Remember, you want your viewers to focus on your face. When editing your professional headshot, the photo editor will want to crop your photo as closely to your face as possible.
When it comes to jewelry, simple is better. A pair of gold hoop earrings or small pearl necklace will allow them to crop close without something distracting from your face.
Guys: Skip the Undershirt
We know, we know. The space underneath your chin and face is some of the most real estate on your professional headshot. However, that doesn’t mean you want an undershirt popping up at your chin in your headshot.
An unbuttoned dress shirt looks awesome, but a white undershirt laughing at you from your photo does not. Unless you’re going for a super casual look, it’s best you leave the undershirt at home. And if you aren’t wearing a tie, make sure that your collar hassome substance to it as well.
Color Theory
Colors can make us feel certain ways about other people. Not only that, but there is actually science behind choosing the right colors for your brand. Red makes you feel confident, while navy makes you feel powerful. When deciding what you want to wear for your headshot, think about what you want your brand or yourself to portray and use color theory to your advantage.
On top of colors, patterns can be distracting in photos.
Unless it’s a very small pattern, you risk running into “moiré.” Moiré is that weird pattern you get when two different patterns are overlaid on top of each other and conflict with each other (think when you wear a shirt with stripes and take a photo in front of a shirt-checkered background).
Add Some Contrast
When heading out to get your professional headshots taken, think about what you will be photoshopped on top of. If you are looking to have non-branded headshots taken (let’s, say you will be adding your head to green screens to use for advertising later on), try to pick out clothing that will give you some contrast against the background. You don’t want to wear a dark shirt and stand in front of a dark background. Same problem as above, you will disappear.
This also applies to skin tone. Try your best not to wear colors that are too close to your skin tone.
“No white shoulders!”
Ok we promised we would stop over posting on you but there are two extremely common outfits that you should avoid wearing for your professional headshots. First, white shoulders.
We see what you did there with the white blazer. Try to avoid white blazers when having your professional headshots taken. When cropped, they resemble doctor’s coats.
The second outfit we want you to avoid is as cliché as it sounds: waiting tables. We’re looking at you combination of black suit, white button up, and black tie.
