What did you actually wear to the first gallery meeting?
I'm being serious, it's not a joke question. I spent more time thinking about my clothes before my first meeting with a gallery director here in Lyon than I did about what to say about the paintings. I turned up in a decent jacket and felt ridiculous the whole time. The director was in a wool sweater with paint on the cuff.
Since then I've stopped dressing for it at all. Clean hands, clean shirt, that's my whole strategy.
So, what did you wear, and did it matter? I want the honest version, including anyone who showed up in studio clothes and got the show anyway.
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I wore a grey wool jacket, ironed shirt, the whole careful thing. The gallerist was in jeans and a fleece. What actually mattered was that I had brought the work in a proper portfolio box and my hands were clean, she looked at my hands before the work.
Clean hands, clean shirt is the right strategy. The only thing I'd add is don't smell of the studio, paper dust, glue, whatever solvent. That's the part people notice without knowing they noticed.
The hands thing, yes. I had not thought of it that way but it is true, isn't it. A director looks at your hands the way a chef looks at a knife. And the smell, god, that is the detail nobody tells you. I once walked into a meeting reeking of turpentine because I had cleaned brushes that morning and thought I was being virtuous. The woman took a step back. Not a small step.
The portfolio box I agree with, though I would go further: the box matters less than what is inside it being properly presented. I have seen beautiful work arrive in a plastic sleeve and it does something to the room, voilà. It says this person does not quite believe in it yet.
The smell I would put above the clothes, honestly. I once spent a morning stretched over a canvas with turpentine and turned up to a meeting reeking of it. She was polite. She also never called back, and I have always half wondered.
Though I'd say the portfolio box mattered more than the hands. Clean hands and no box is still a stranger with clean hands.