What to wear for an executive portrait

Wear something you already own and already like. The best clothing for an executive portrait is a garment you have worn to something that mattered — a board meeting, a pitch, a hearing — because you carry yourself differently in clothes you trust. Everything below is refinement on that one point.

What works

Solid, mid-to-dark tones. Navy, charcoal, deep grey, black, forest, burgundy. My studio is lit from a single dominant source with a great deal of shadow, which means darker cloth does something useful: it lets the light fall on the face rather than competing with it. That is not a stylistic preference. It is the reason a Van Dyck portrait puts a white collar against a black doublet — the eye is being directed, deliberately.

Texture reads beautifully. Wool, tweed, heavy cotton, good knitwear. Under directed light, texture gives a surface something to do. Flat synthetic fabric tends to go dead.

Good tailoring matters more than expensive tailoring. A well-fitted jacket from the high street will photograph better than a costly one cut for someone else's shoulders.

What causes problems

Tight patterns — narrow stripes, small checks, herringbone at scale — can interfere with the sensor and produce a shimmering effect that no retouching removes cleanly. Bring the pinstripe if you love it, but bring an alternative too.

Bright white on its own tends to pull the eye off the face and can be difficult to hold detail in. White under a jacket is entirely fine and often excellent.

Large, current-season logos date a portrait fast. These images should still be usable in six years.

Very light or very bright block colour — pale blue, red, lime — will cast onto the underside of your jaw. It is correctable, but it costs time we would rather spend on the portrait.

Bring options

Two or three. Almost every executive who brings choices ends up using the second thing they brought. For a leadership team, the marketing lead should send everyone the same short brief — dark or mid-tone, minimal pattern, jacket if it is a jacket culture — a fortnight ahead. Consistency across a leadership page is achieved in the wardrobe email, not in post-production.

Grooming

Ordinary haircut a week out, not two days out. If you wear glasses, wear them; we control reflections with light placement, not by asking you to remove the thing your colleagues recognise you by. Shave or don't, but do whichever you usually do — a portrait should look like a Tuesday, not a wedding.

The thing nobody mentions

Sleep matters more than any garment in this article. A well-rested face lit properly needs almost no retouching. A tired one needs a great deal, and retouching is where portraits start to look like someone else.

Sittings for executives and leadership teams are booked through the studio in Los Angeles, New York and London. Email RL@rorylewis.studio.