The Groomer

John T. Molloy believes in the old saw that clothes make the man. He believes it so much that two years ago he became America's first wardrobe engineer, a veritable B.F. Skinner of haberdashery who believes that a man's clothing can be chosen to evoke conditioned responses from anyone he meets. Operating out of a cluttered office in Manhattan, Molloy teaches dress habits that, he says, enable salesmen to sell more insurance, trial lawyers to win more cases and executives to exert more authority. Wardrobe engineering, Molloy says, "is just putting together the elements of psychology, fashion, sociology and art."

Molloy began to develop his theory in the late 1950s, when as an instructor at a prep school in Connecticut, he discovered that a teacher's dress could subtly affect student performance. In one case, two teachers taught the same class in separate half-day sessions; one consistently wore penny loafers while the other wore traditional lace-up shoes. The students, it turned out, worked longer and harder for the teacher in lace-ups, and Molloy concluded that the shoes were responsible. "I felt we were on to something big," he recalls, "but nobody noticed."

Chintzy Ties. Nobody, that is," but Molloy. Over the next decade, he refined his techniques and conducted other experiments that convinced him he was right. During his early research, for example, he discovered that the Boston Strangler invariably wore beige or gray repairman-like outfits; the light colors tended to reassure housewives and helped him get into their homes. Last year Molloy planted an actor posing as a trainee in a New York City corporate office, and instructed him to ask 100 secretaries to retrieve some information from their files. First the actor dressed in "lower-middle-class" style: black shoes with large buckles, a greenish-blue suit, a white shirt and a chintzy blue polyester tie, thick glasses and a gold expansion watch band. In that garb, he was able to get only twelve secretaries out of 50 to go to the files for him. Later, in an "upper-middle-class" outfit--styled hair, expensive blue suit, beige shirt, silk polka-dot tie and brown cordovan shoes--he visited 50 more secretaries. This time, 42 of the 50 did as they were bade.

Based on such findings, Molloy has put together a number of courses designed to teach clients how to dress more effectively. For $300, he will teach an "upper-middle-class set of color and pattern values" that will help boost the wearer in the corporate world. For those with three years and $1,000 to invest, he will conduct a full-fledged, complex "credibility study" designed to find the "clothing trend" that will best project a desired image.

Molloy has already had plenty of takers. At his suggestion, the owner of an insurance agency in a Boston suburb replaced his flashily attired sales force with men in gray suits, simple ties and button-down collars--and sales boomed. A trial lawyer with a folksy courtroom manner and a losing record was persuaded to abandon his pinstripe suits and wire-rimmed spectacles (which were more suitable for a remote "authority figure") in favor of solid blue suits and glasses with thicker frames that gave him a friendlier image. He is now winning more cases.

One of Molloy's most satisfying experiences occurred a few years ago, when a conservatively dressed corporate recruiter at Columbia University insisted to him that clothes did not matter. It was a time when militant students were throwing recruiters off campus, and Molloy guaranteed that he could dress him so that a student would punch him in the nose. Dressed in dark blue clothing "just like a cop," the recruiter ventured back onto campus--and caught a fast one in the chops. Molloy collected his fee and won a convert.

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