A reader writes:
Something happened to me 15 years ago that always surprises me. When I was a senior in college, I was applying for internships in my field (comms/PR, if that matters) in Washington, DC, with the help of my academic advisor.
An in-person interview at one of the big legacy PR firms went really well. When my academic advisor talked about this, he said that the company thought I was a fantastic candidate and that they would absolutely love to hire me, except for one thing: he thought the shirt I was wearing was inappropriate for an interview setting and, specifically, had sequins on it. Ultimately because of this I did not get the fellowship.
I found an almost exact replica of the shirt I am attaching. If I remember correctly, I wore it with a well-tailored black pantsuit, which I was very proud to have purchased on my limited college budget.
Do you think the company was right in 2010 (given that I was 23 and knew nothing about the working world at the time other than a few internships and especially the dress code standards of the time) or not? Would you have made the same call 16 years ago? And, do you think this will happen in 2026 also? Should we warn new graduates to stay away from all the sequins? For the record, I wouldn’t wear that shirt now – but really only because it’s the 2010s. I remember it was part of my regular office job rotation after I got my first job later that year.
I wouldn’t recommend sequins to a job interview at all, then or now, simply because they place more importance on “night time attire” than professional interview wear… unless you’re in a much more discounted area than DC communications companies. DC is extremely conservative when it comes to work attire.
But that’s a ridiculous reason not to hire you – especially if you were 23 and still figuring this thing out, but even if you’re older.
And as sequins go, this particular shirt is less of a problem than a full sequin top or sequin dress – and the fact that you wore it under the jacket of a pantsuit makes their reaction even more so.
I would put it in the category of things I would advise a candidate not to wear to make the most professional impression, but wouldn’t advise an employer not to hire more people (because it doesn’t really matter). And a candidate whom they said was fantastic and whom they would otherwise prefer to hire – in other words, where you clearly gave them no other reason to doubt their judgment, and where this could have been easily resolved by explaining their dress code to you when hired? absurd.
