The blazer still matters. Even when no one sees it below the frame.
On the mornings when nothing else feels certain, a structured jacket and a straight spine can do work that motivation cannot. Clothing is an act of authorship, the sentence written before a single word gets spoken. Power dressing was never about the room. It is about the person who walks into it.
This is not vanity. It is operational. People who dress for the meeting they are already winning carry themselves differently — shoulders back, decisions faster, tolerance for nonsense lower. The effect is measurable even when the audience is a grid of muted rectangles.
The Screen Is Not a Loophole
Every table worth sitting at, physical or virtual, demands presence. Presence is not a personality trait. It is a discipline. The professionals who decided a webcam permitted pajama bottoms and a ring light also, quietly, decided something about their own authority. What gets projected is what gets funded, heard, and remembered.
Dress for the version of yourself that already closed the deal, already earned the seat, already handled harder rooms than this one. The camera crops the frame. It does not crop credibility. That gets set before anyone ever logs on.
