Today, I'm going to be giving advice to a gentleman who is a heavy commuter. In fact, he's commuting four hours a day and he's wondering:
“How can I dress sharp when I'm spending so much time on public transportation? Precisely, I live in a city that's 70 kilometers from the capital. I have to get on the bus at 6:00 a.m. every morning.”
He's in Kosovo, by the way, so he's on there two hours. After work, he gets on the bus for a two-hour commute back home. He works at a court. I guess he's a lawyer so he needs to be shaved, well-dressed and appear in front of a judge almost daily. Given the fact that he has to undergo this route the entire year, 12 months, four seasons.
What would be my advice?
Four Things To Focus On When Dressing Sharp For Commute
1. For three of the seasons and not including the summer, you need to have some good outerwear.
This is going to be like your shield of armor and your protection because you can wear something nice underneath it but if you've got a long overcoat or you've got a trench coat that is for the fall or the spring and it's dark colored, you can go with the dark.
I've got a beautiful dark blue trench coat which I love and it's darker colored because simply it's more practical than the lighter colored one.
That's going to be a huge asset because it's going to protect pretty much all of your clothing. And if you get it lightweight, you're going to be able to wear it even on cooler days.
You can have really nice clothing on underneath it and not worry about it getting dirtied or soiled.
2. The next thing is going to be your footwear. Consider keeping a couple of really nice pairs of shoes at work and at home and during your commute travels, you wear a pair of boots or something which is going to give you more traction.
It's going to be more comfortable. And when you get mud or slosh on it, you're not going to be upset.
Also, it sounds like galoshes could be an option as well in really bad weather but I would say going with a really nice pair and they have dress boots out there that you could actually move around and very few people would actually notice it.
There are some really nice dress boots out there but I would have some really nice shoes which are there for you when you're at work in front of the judge.
3. The other thing is dark colors and this is probably going to apply more in the summertime. Oftentimes, we want to go towards lighter colors, but I'm thinking that if you are going to be in a crowded public transportation, wear dark colors.
I've got a story in Ukraine with my wife. It's the first time we're traveling in public transportation. The bus pulls up and it opens up and people are almost falling out of it. Basically, my wife takes a step back and she almost runs up and they jump into it, literally people are pushing themselves into these things.
It's that packed. I can't even imagine in the summer having to do this. If you're having to do that, you want to wear dark colors because you can't control it if you get something stained on you. Also, if you're sweating, you want something that's going to help cover that up. Consider an undershirt.
4. The last thing which goes with the summer is to have a change of clothes there at work. There's a great scene in Mad Men. Draper, he's been out all night partying and got a couple of hours of sleep at his mistress' house.
He goes into work and he takes some ice, pours himself a stiff drink, and opens up his drawer and he's just got all of these white shirts. He simply changes really quick and changes the shirt.
He hasn't showered, he hasn't cleaned up, and he's fine for that first meeting. He probably needed to shave and stuff but you can make this happen.
I used to do this all the time when I was in the Marine Corps. I would keep a change of clothes there.
If it was a late night, I wouldn't even go home. I would simply crash there in my office. I'd pull out a cot. I could make that happen actually. I had an office, but it was a shared office, and I used a small closet space where I kept changes of clothing, a little bit harder with professional clothing because you need to allow it to air out and breathe.
Also, the fact of security, you want to be able to lock this up but perhaps there's a gym that you can rent a locker at and keep a change of clothing there. It'd probably be a well worthy investment versus you trying to move everything around.
Hopefully, those tips helped.
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