An address made by Huffington Post chief Arianna Huffington recently saw the successful entrepreneur and writer wearing the same dress as she had worn at conferences - and that she planned to wear at still more conferences?

Why?

The question was posed as to why women need to buy a new outfit for every occasion or event.

The Evil HR Lady (Suzanne Lucas) wrote about the issue and asked why women focus so much on clothing.

Do they really need to?

"Do you remember when an Australian newscaster wore the same suit for a

year and no one noticed? Remember when Megyn Kelly wore a spaghetti strap dress and the internet lost its collective mind? (It's because 'society has norms, and you can't go against them without some such reaction).

Why do we care so much about what women wear?

The reality is, writes Lucas, that men don't actually care much about wearing the same outfit. She notes - "This morning, in the elevator, there was a group of HR people discussing Huffington's presentation. One woman said, "the man sitting next to me couldn't understand why all the women were laughing." A man responded, "Because he's been wearing the same suit for 11 years."

"He's probably not far off the mark. It's women that care about what women wear. And while it's fine to care about fashion, Huffington points out that it's making it more difficult for women to succeed.

"Why? Because it takes time and decision making. We each have a limited amount of time and a limited amount of decision making capability. When we spend our time focusing on finding new things to wear, we use up that time and decision making space."

So it's a prioritizing thing. Make decisions, but focus on the decision-making that is really going to make a difference.

And what dress/suit you wear probably isn't going to be one of the key factors affecting how people react to you.

Source: Evil HR Lady