What do I wear to work?

You’ve spent the last 5+ years as a uni student. Your clothing probably consists of the usual student getup – jeans, tshirts, trackpants, hoodies, maybe a few nicer clothes for going out if you can afford it. If you’re like me, your fashion choices often involves PJs and ugg-boots!

Now, all of a sudden, you’re a ‘professional’ and required to present to a workplace for your internship. You want to dress appropriately, but don’t know where to start.

What do psychologists wear anyway?

There’s no one right answer. Clothing for me, working as a psychologist has included:

Corporate wear, with a nice blouse, a blazer, suits, trousers and leather shoes. Light makeup. Once upon a time, I even had brown hair!
Old ripped jeans and faded tshirts, joggers. No makeup.
More or less anything (skirt, trousers, shirt). But with a cardigan.
A tutu and a cape made from the trans flag.
Bright and colourful dressing with rainbow hair.

My point is that the clothing you might appropriately wear can vary enormously. There’s no right or wrong answer for every psychology role or workplace.

In general:

Nothing too revealing. Of note is that discrimination on the basis of physical appearance can and does still occur in workplaces. For example, I am not the only person I know who has been told their clothing is inappropriate simply because clothing sits on larger chests differently to smaller chests.
No offensive slogans or memes. I once had a client attend a session with me wearing a tshirt that looked a bit like this. I laughed, and told the client to never attend a job interview wearing it in case their employer understood the reference. The same advice applies to you.
Be comfortable. Don’t wear clothing that isn’t consistent with your sensory needs. You want to be able to attend to the needs of people you support during sessions, so it’s important to be comfortable in whatever you wear.

How do I choose an outfit?

In deciding what to wear, here are a few considerations:

What are other people at the workplace wearing? This is particularly useful to know if your outfits fit within your workplace culture. Are you working at a practice where everyone appears to be dressed in some sort of business casual? If so, you might want to at least start out wearing similar business casual. If you’re interviewed by someone in a suit, that suggests you might want to consider dressing a little more formally – a suit, or slacks, a shirt with buttons or a nice blouse for example. If the person who interviews you is in the office and dressed informally, you can probably wear less formal clothing too.

What have they told you to wear? It’s perfectly ok to ask!

Who are your clients? A key lesson I learned as an undergrad in the early 2000’s was to dress in such a way as to minimize power disparity and white coat syndrome.

Are you conducting home visits or outreach work?

Consider the right to confidentiality. If you are visiting someone in a suburb where most people are dressed informally, but you’re in business wear and clutching your notebook, driving a brand new pool car, there is a high liklihood that you will be identified as a service provider. This has happened to me. One day I was visiting someone in their home. The local neighbourhood kids noticed me and asked if I was ‘from welfare’. People notice. You don’t want to stand out as looking like a service provider.

Think about safety. Don’t wear clothing or footwear you can’t move easily in. Make sure your clothing has pockets so car keys stay on your body at all times. This is the setting where I have often worn old jeans, joggers and a tshirt.

Are your clients children, young people and families?

Think about clothing you can move in, including getting on and off floors. This means consider wearing pants that either stretch or are loose enough that getting up and down does not put you at risk of ripped seams! I personally tend to wear either leggings or some sort of stretchy trousers if I’m going to be on and off the floor a lot.

Consider colours and styles. Are you likely to be around very small children who might grab jewelry? If so, don’t wear anything fragile. Are your clients likely to respond well to bright colours, or would it be too stimulating?

What should I wear on my first day?

If you want to fit in, something appropriate for a less formal office, with a cardigan will likely suit most workplaces. If you got the feeling at your interview that the workplace is more formal or corporate, dress more formally too.

Here are a couple of outfits I’ve worn:

Going for corporate yet bubbly here. Neon blazer, black outfit, necklace, makeup. No full length body photos, but I was wearing black slacks. This sort of outfit would fit in anywhere with a more formal dress code.

Work appropriate for a less formal workplace, yet a little more edgy and quirky, in honour of my love of dogs. Working at an NGO, this is the sort of clothing I tend to wear on office days! Notice the cardigan 🙂 My colleagues like seeing what outfits I come up with. One of my close friends who was my manager for many years has told me that the day she met me, I was wearing a particularly nice, quirky outfit and it made her feel warm and happy to see me. If I can use my clothes to help people feel comfortable to be themselves around me, then I am happy.

You can always ask AI

I asked DALL-E2 to generate some portraits of psychologists. AI models draw on what already exists out in the world. This means they are inherently biased – and so if you are wanting to figure out what a stereotypical ‘look’ is for a psychologist, asking AI for images of psychologists will probably show you.

Take note of the colour. AI suggests psychologists wear whites, greys, dark blues and beige and that’s about it. If you want to look as much like a stereotype of a psychologist as possible, ‘sad beige‘ is probably the way to go 🙂

Happy dressing and styling. I hope this post has given you some ideas and thoughts. I think in general, workplaces are less formal than they once were, so it’s likely a broad range of clothing options will be just fine.