Hi, Antonio! I have to tell you how helpful your daily videos are.” Well, you're welcome. “I recently met an old schoolmate and somehow the question came up, what to wear to our class reunion. And so, I started thinking how should I dress especially when I haven't seen these people for a long time and I want to create a solid first impression. My usual go-to outfit is a well fitted suit, but do you have any suggestions and what would be your thoughts?
Hi! I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style. Today, we're going to be talking about what to wear to a class reunion.
All right, this is the question that came in and this came over from Marcel and he's asking, “Hi, Antonio! I have to tell you how helpful your daily videos are.”
Well, you're welcome. “I recently met an old schoolmate and somehow the question came up, what to wear to our class reunion.
And so, I started thinking how should I dress especially when I haven't seen these people for a long time and I want to create a solid first impression.
My usual go-to outfit is a well fitted suit, but do you have any suggestions and what would be your thoughts?”
Okay, Marcel, so let me go ahead and jump right into this. There are a number of factors that go into that and it sounds like a suit is what you're already planning. If this is what you normally wear, then go for it.
In addition, one of the other factors that you mentioned is that you haven't seen these people for a long time. So here, you're wanting to, in a sense, reset the clock.
How To Dress For A Class Reunion?
If you think about it, a lot of these people maybe haven't seen you for 10 years, maybe 20 years, and they have this impression of the last time they saw you.
That's how they remember you. They knew you at a very impressionable time period and they may look at you as the class clown. They may remember you as the jock.
They remember you as the guy at the back of the class that didn't say anything.
Whatever it may be, most likely you're not that person anymore. You have transformed.
You have gone on to do great things, and you want to go in there and show in really without having to say a word that you are a different person.
So in order to click that reset button, I do suggest that you dress your best and go in there and just knock them out.
To give a little bit more general guidance, the first thing I would look at as what I'm going to wear for anyone else out there that may have this question, is what are you trying to do and how familiar are you with the group that's getting together?
I went to a small high school in West Texas and I know a lot of the people still live in that area back around Midland Texas. It was a small school called Greenwood.
At Greenwood, a lot of people, they're just in that area and they see each other whenever they go to any of the local stores.
If you happen to go to the outback or any of the restaurants, you're oftentimes going to run into somebody. So they've seen most of the people there, but if I went back,
I haven't seen a lot of these people for ten — how old am I? Wow! It's going to be 15 years.
So in that case, I would tell you that I would be wearing at least a sports jacket, a pair of really nice raw denim or a pair of odd trousers with probably my western boots or dress slip-on loafers.
But that would be me because I realized I would be wanting to click the reset to show that I have changed and I'm no longer that really quiet, shy guy that never really said anything, that I've kind of transformed myself into someone I'm very proud of and I want people to know that.
There's also the issue, and some of you may be feeling this especially if you were pigeonholed as someone that was super quiet or perhaps you were very unpopular and people made fun of you, perhaps you don't want to go into this.
You want to go show these people that you're beyond that and there's a bit of a psychological barrier, so dressing nice is kind of like a suit of armor.
You're going to go in there and you're going to show them that, “Hey, I am a successful person and you may be still that small person that's going to think of me as that loser that you didn't think was going to amount to anything.
But I'm here to show you that I overcame that and I hope that you have become a bigger person as well,” so take those factors into account, how often do you see these people.
If you see these people on a daily basis and you're in that local town and everyone is going to be attending this except for maybe one or two people you've seen just last week.
You probably don't have to dress to the same extent, although you can because at the end of the day, maybe you're dressed — I know I often dress, and I talk about it.
I want people to dress to the level really that they're showing self-respect and they dress for themselves, not so much the other. Dressing for others is kind of the secondary reason. Really, you're dressing for yourself.
Just remember you're representing your family. There's the good chance that you'll be bringing your wife or your significant other with you. If it's a family event, maybe your kids will be there, so you want to put your best foot forward.
So whether it's a suit, whether it's a sport jacket, odd trouser, whether it's a nice pair of denim with a dress shirt or if you've just gotten off work and you work in an industry in which you're going to have to be wearing your uniform, at least make sure it's clean and well put together. At the end of the day, put forth the image that you want, control that, and have fun.
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