(extract)....When we begin to talk I realise that Julia’s blindness has given me a cloak of anonymity. The interview has been arranged by a third party (the RNIB) and we have never spoken and she knows nothing about me other than my name. She can hear my voice and what it might convey (female, regional/class accent, and some approximation of age) but she cannot see my skin colour, my age, my marital status, my style of clothes or indeed anything else an imaginative person might construe from my appearance. I quite enjoy my newfound invisibility but I sense that it is unfair. I want, as Goffman says, to achieve a ‘working consensus’ so that we can have a meaningful conversation on an equal footing. For Goffman, a working consensus is achieved not when both parties can be completely candid, as this is rare and fraught with the risk of faux pas, but instead arises when each participant: “Conveys a view of the situation which he feels the others will be able to find at least temporarily acceptable.” Knowing so little about me, Julia is socially disadvantaged; she is inexpert at editing her conversation to be in tune with how she perceives me, the interviewer. Should I give her more information, to match the knowledge I have gained from seeing her? I am unsure what to say or what information to give, perhaps I should tell her what I am wearing, but I decide this would seem odd, so I give little away.
My construction of the interview starts when I get dressed in the morning. I am unusually conscious of my clothing for these particular interviews because although my general purpose at the initial meeting is to get to know the women, I will also be asking some questions about shopping and clothes. Aware that my outfit relates to the topic in hand, but will not be seen, I decide to dress as I would for any other in-home interview. My standard winter interview outfit is a dark blue A line denim skirt, good quality leather boots, a V necked sweater and a corduroy coat. I disapprove of wearing denim jeans to interviews. For me, jeans are not professional enough when meeting someone for the first time in an interview situation. Informality is desirable, but the actual wearing of jeans for me exudes an artificial chumminess which I prefer to avoid. Nonetheless, denim has many advantages, its chameleon like qualities for blending in in different situations, and the material itself which moulds onto the body without being clingy. As Miller and Woodward state in their Manifesto for a Study of Denim:
“the profundity of denim lies in the way it manages to be simultaneously our single most global garment and the most personal garment we possess” (Miller and Woodward, 2007)
A well cut denim skirt is my sartorial solution, denim but not jeans, smart, respectful, informal, intimate. I wear light make up as usual, though I am somewhat relieved my face will not be scrutinised in any detail.
Selecting my clothes in this way is part of the identity project of my working life. In this sense they are signs, a presentation of myself as the ‘approachable professional’. But they are also who I am, real objects I think with, use and live with, and not superficial at all. The fact that my outfit will not be seen by those I am interviewing adds a new way of thinking about the interview. I become compulsive in my thinking. I could turn up in a clown-suit and conduct the entire interview that way, she wouldn’t know. The fact I wear what I always do highlights the habitual groove ‘the interview’ has become for me, the seasoned interviewer, well honed in the art of extracting information and stories, yet also my choice of clothes and the fact they differ little from interview to interview speaks of my interview ideals; authenticity and egalitarian exchange.
