Every week somebody sits down in my studio, holds up two shirts, and asks which one looks more “professional.” Both shirts are fine. Both would look fine on a stranger at Costco. The real problem is that nobody told this person the wardrobe advice they read the night before was recycled. Same five sentences, two hundred blog posts, different city name in the title.
I used to give the lazy version of that answer myself. “Wear something you’d wear to a client meeting.” Done. Four seconds, technically true, and useless to the guy standing in his closet at eleven at night. I said it for years because it sounded wise and took zero effort on my part. That’s on me. Not on the client who showed up looking like he got dressed in the dark on purpose.
Here’s what actually matters, and it has nothing to do with taste. Navy and charcoal photograph better than almost anything else you can put on your torso. That’s not a style opinion I’m handing down from some fashion throne. It’s a physics problem. Studio lighting blows white out and swallows black whole, while navy and charcoal hold their value under the lights. Patterns and logos do to a lens what fine print does to a fax machine. They turn into static.
That matters more than people assume because of how fast the decision gets made. Most recruiters size up a profile in about thirty seconds, and the headshot registers first, before anyone reads a word of the bio. Profiles with a decent photo pull far more views and connection requests than the ones without one. Your shirt is doing PR work before anyone learns your name.
Solid Colors, No White, No Black, Bring a Backup
A few rules hold no matter what you do for a living, and none of them require a stylist. Solid colors in navy, charcoal, or a deep jewel tone beat patterns and busy prints every time a camera shows up. Skip pure white and pure black. One blows out under the lights, the other flattens into a shape with no detail left in it. Bring two outfits instead of one. The color that looked sharp in your bathroom mirror can betray you the second the backdrop changes. Bring a backup.
Law, Finance, and Corporate Clients Dress Like the Stakes Are Real
When I’m shooting an attorney or a wealth manager, someone whose clients hire judgment as much as service, the wardrobe has one job. Look like someone a stranger would trust with a six-figure decision. For men that means a dark suit in navy, charcoal, or black, paired with a crisp white or light blue shirt. Whether the tie shows up depends on what the office wears on a normal Tuesday, not on what looks sharpest in a magazine. A guy who’s never worn a tie to work, suddenly wearing one for the camera, doesn’t read as polished. He reads like he’s playing dress-up for a part he didn’t get.
Women get the same result from a structured blazer or a tailored suit. Lean a notch more formal than usual if the photos are going on an executive or partner page. I had a managing partner tell me once that his whole firm wears blazers without ties to client meetings, every single day, no exceptions, and copying that beat defaulting to a full suit just because the industry technically counts as finance. Look at your own leadership. Not a stock photo of a lawyer.
Tech, Real Estate, and Fitness Break the Rules on Purpose
Put a founder in a full suit and the photo stops saying competent. It starts saying he borrowed it for the day. A sweater over a collared shirt, or an open blazer over a clean t-shirt, photographs sharp without the costume problem. The failure runs the other direction too, showing up in whatever you had on at the office and reading as careless, not casual. Especially when what you had on is a hoodie with a coffee stain the size of a dinner plate. Clean and well-fitted still isn’t optional. It’s just aimed at a different target now.
Real estate agents should dress one notch above the buyers they want walking through an open house. Buyers are hiring a relationship more than a transaction. Jewel tones and higher contrast help because your headshot is competing against a dozen other pale gray blazers in the same thumbnail-sized grid. Disappearing into that lineup costs more than looking slightly bold ever will.
Fitness professionals should skip business wear completely. Nobody hiring a trainer wants a photo of their future account manager. Solid athletic wear, clean and fitted, sells the person who’ll actually show up to the six a.m. session. A blazer never will.
None of these lines are locked. A consultant who also coaches CrossFit might genuinely need two different headshots for two different rooms. That’s a normal thing to ask for in one sitting. Treat the industry guidance as a starting point. When it conflicts with what your clients actually expect, go with your clients.
Three mistakes show up in my studio more than any others. Overdoing accessories is the first. A watch and small earrings are plenty, and anything louder competes with your own face. Wearing something you’d never actually wear to work is the second. It creates a tiny credibility gap the moment a client meets you and the outfit doesn’t match the person. Treating grooming like an afterthought is the third. A fresh haircut and pressed clothes do more for a photo than a marginally nicer shirt ever will.
Glasses aren’t the problem people think they are. Anti-reflective lenses and a small tilt away from direct light solve most of it, and I can retouch whatever’s left. If your industry isn’t listed above, use the corporate guidance and adjust a notch in whichever direction your workplace actually leans. Match your shirt to the backdrop before you worry about matching it to your website. Nobody compares your headshot to your homepage in real time.
Lighting trends and posing styles shift every couple of years. What looked current a while back can look dated fast. Solid colors, the right formality for the room, and a fit that actually fits do not age the same way. Those three things were true the year I started shooting headshots, they were true a decade before that, and they’ll still be true long after whatever’s trending on LinkedIn this quarter gets forgotten by every last person who posted about it. Bank on that instead.
Bring two shirts to the session and let’s figure out the rest together. See what a headshot session covers. Take it for what it’s worth.
