What to Wear for a Corporate Headshot

Here is something people don’t always realize. What you wear matters less than you think, right up until it doesn’t.

Almost every question I get before a session is about wardrobe. What color. Whether the pattern is too much. If the jacket is necessary. Fair questions, all of them. Here is how I actually think about it.

Solid beats patterned, almost always. A tight pattern does strange things to a camera sensor and stranger things to a small LinkedIn thumbnail. Stripes and fine checks can shimmer. If you love a patterned shirt, bring it. Bring a solid too.

Bring sleeves. Bare arms pull the eye down and out of the frame. In a headshot, everything that is not your face is competing with your face. Sleeves keep the attention where it belongs.

Watch the neckline. The neckline is the bottom border of the picture. A collar, a crew neck, a v-neck that is not fighting for attention. It should quietly point up toward you.

A layer does most of the work. A blazer, a cardigan, a structured jacket. A layer adds shape at the shoulders and gives the image some architecture. It is the easiest single upgrade to how put together you look, and it costs you nothing but bringing it along.

Color depends on where the image is going. Deeper colors sit back and let your face come forward. Navy, charcoal, forest, burgundy, black. Lighter and warmer colors step forward with you. Neither is wrong. It depends on whether you want the image to feel steady or feel approachable.

If you wear glasses, wear them. People ask whether to take them off. If you wear glasses every day, you should be wearing them. That is what you look like. Anti-reflective lenses help, and I can work the angles for the rest. What I do not want is a version of you that your own clients would not recognize.

What to leave home. Big logos. Anything trendy enough to date the image within a year. Brand-new clothes you have not worn yet, because you will fidget with them the whole time. Anything you are already unsure about, because that hesitation shows up in your face long before it shows up in the fabric.

Bring more than you think you need. Two or three options is not overkill. I would rather have choices in the room than wish for them.

Here is the part nobody tells you. The reason wardrobe matters is not that a blazer photographs better than a sweater. It is that when you are not thinking about what you are wearing, you stop bracing. And that is when the image gets good.

The clothes are just what makes it easier to forget about the clothes.