Nobody sat me down and explained the rules.
That is how most of the important knowledge in performance works. The big concepts get written about in books and discussed in forums. But the small, practical details of how to present yourself physically? Those live in the oral tradition, passed from performer to performer in dressing rooms and late-night conversations after shows. And if you do not have access to those conversations — if you are, like me, an adult who came to performance from a completely different world — you learn them by making mistakes.
This post is about a collection of small rules I have gathered over the past several years. Rules about a handkerchief, a jacket, and a shirt. Rules that, individually, seem trivial. Collectively, they are the difference between looking like a professional and looking like someone who is trying to be one.
The Shirt Rule
I will start with the most specific and least obvious rule because it is the one that surprised me most when I first encountered it.
Dan Harlan, in his comprehensive lecture on treating magic as theatre, states a rule that I had never considered: only wear an untucked shirt if it has a squared-off hem. Not a curved, shirt-tail cut. A straight, horizontal bottom edge.
The reason is visual. A traditional dress shirt is designed to be tucked in. Its hem curves down at the sides and in the back because it is meant to stay inside your trousers. When you wear it untucked, that curved hem looks sloppy. It looks like you forgot to tuck your shirt in, or like you got dressed in a hurry. It reads as an accident rather than a choice.
A squared-off hem — the kind you find on casual button-downs, camp shirts, and some modern dress shirts designed to be worn untucked — looks intentional. It communicates that you chose to wear your shirt this way. Choice reads as confidence. Accident reads as carelessness.
I tested this by reviewing recordings from two different performances. In one, I had worn a standard dress shirt untucked with a curved hem because the venue was casual and I wanted to match the room’s energy. In the other, I wore a shirt specifically designed to be worn untucked, with a clean straight hem. The difference on camera was immediately obvious. The first looked slightly disheveled, like I was not quite put together. The second looked relaxed and deliberate.
It is a tiny thing. But performance is made of tiny things.
The Jacket Question
The jacket is the most powerful single garment in a performer’s wardrobe, and I did not understand why for a long time.
I came from the consulting world, where jackets are standard professional attire. I wore them every day. I thought of them as a dress code requirement, not as a performance tool. When I started performing, I sometimes wore a jacket and sometimes did not, depending on the venue and the mood, without any strategic thinking behind the choice.
Then I started paying attention to what the jacket actually did for me on stage. And I started reading what experienced performers had to say about it.
Harlan describes his performance costume as a blue velvet jacket, striped black tie, gray shirt, and black slacks. His character concept is “the host of the best party you’ve ever been to.” The jacket is central to that image. It signals that this person is in charge, that they have prepared, that they are elevated slightly above the everyday. Not above the audience — that is a crucial distinction — but above the ordinary. The jacket says: something special is happening here.
Fitzkee was even more direct about the principle. He argued that performers should always appear in the latest cut and style, with clothing that is a bit more polished, a bit more intentional than what the audience is wearing. The goal is not to overdress. It is to signal that you take this seriously enough to have thought about it.
For my corporate keynote context, the jacket serves a double function. It establishes authority — the consulting world conditioned audiences to associate jackets with expertise — and it provides practical benefits. A jacket creates a defined silhouette. It adds structure to your upper body that makes gestures read more cleanly from a distance. It provides pockets and, critically, a natural path for a lavalier microphone cord.
I now treat the jacket as a default. I can always take it off during a performance if the energy calls for it — and that removal itself becomes a moment, a shift in formality that communicates “things are getting real.” But starting without a jacket means I have given away that option before I even begin.
The Pocket Square
The pocket square — or handkerchief, as I grew up calling it — was something I adopted late and reluctantly.
In my consulting life, I almost never wore one. It felt like an affectation. Something for men of a different generation, or for people who were performing a kind of old-world elegance that did not match my personality. When I saw magicians wearing pocket squares, I associated it with the stereotype I was trying to avoid — the tuxedoed magician with the top hat and the rabbit.
I was wrong about all of this.
The pocket square turned out to be one of the most useful small additions to my performance wardrobe.
Visually, it adds a point of color and visual interest to the chest area — exactly where you want attention when you are performing. It breaks up the visual monotony of a solid-colored jacket. A small accent, but small accents matter when you are being watched continuously for thirty minutes.
The color choice communicates too. A pocket square that coordinates with your outfit — picking up a color from your tie, your shirt, or even a prop you will use later — creates a sense of intentionality. It tells the audience, unconsciously, that this person planned their appearance. That nothing about their presentation is accidental. And if nothing about their appearance is accidental, perhaps nothing about their performance is accidental either. The audience extends the logic whether they realize it or not.
Practically, a pocket square gives you a clean, elegant way to wipe your hands during a performance. This sounds absurd until you have performed under hot stage lights and discovered that your hands perspire, which affects your ability to handle cards and other props cleanly. Having a silk square in your breast pocket that you can remove, use casually, and replace is far more elegant than wiping your hands on your trousers or reaching for a towel.
The Tie Decision
I went through a phase where I avoided ties because I wanted to look approachable. What I discovered was more nuanced. A tie does create formality, but formality in the right context is not distance. It is respect. When you perform at a corporate gala or an executive event, a tie communicates that you take the occasion seriously.
There is also a practical benefit: the standard lavalier microphone setup routes the cord along the tie. Without a tie, every alternative for hiding the cord is less clean.
I settled on a middle path. For formal corporate events, I wear a tie. For more casual settings — startup events, creative industry gatherings, private parties — I go without one. The key insight is that this is a deliberate choice based on the audience and the context, made in advance.
Shoes: The Thing Nobody Sees and Everyone Notices
I am including shoes because they exemplify a principle that runs through all of these small rules: the audience notices things you think they cannot see.
Fitzkee was relentless about shoes. Spotless, polished, in good repair. Not because the audience is going to look at your feet — in most performance contexts, they barely glance below your waist — but because shoes are a signal of overall attention to detail. If your shoes are scuffed and dirty, there is a reasonable chance that your preparation in other areas is equally careless. If your shoes are clean and polished, there is a reasonable chance that you are the kind of person who sweats the details.
This is not a conscious calculation the audience makes. It is a subliminal impression that contributes to the overall feeling of “this person is professional” or “this person is winging it.” And audiences pick up on these signals with astonishing accuracy.
I learned this at an event in Linz where I wore everyday shoes because my performance pair was at home. Nobody commented. But something about my own feeling on stage was different — slightly less confident, slightly less grounded. The audience picks up on that energy shift even when they cannot identify its source.
Since then, my performance shoes travel in a separate bag. Clean, polished, dedicated exclusively to performance contexts.
The Cumulative Effect
None of these individual details — the shirt hem, the jacket, the pocket square, the tie, the shoes — is going to make or break a performance. No audience member is going to walk out because your shirt was untucked with a curved hem, or because your shoes had a scuff mark.
But all of them together create something that is more than the sum of its parts. They create an impression. A feeling. A sense that the person on stage has thought about every aspect of what they are presenting. That nothing is accidental. That if they care this much about how they look, they probably care that much about what they do.
Fitzkee called this “careful grooming” and included it in his master list of audience appeals alongside comedy, music, personality, and surprise. Not because a pocket square is as important as being funny. But because the total effect of a performance is built from dozens of contributing factors, and the ones you neglect undermine the ones you get right.
In my consulting work, we call this the halo effect — a positive impression in one area influences perceptions in other areas. It is not fair, it is not rational, but it is real. A performer can either leverage it or ignore it.
The Rules I Follow Now
After several years of performing, after many mistakes and corrections and experiments, I have settled on a set of personal rules for my performance attire. They are not universal. They work for my context — corporate keynotes, private events, and Vulpine Creations showcases. Other performers in other contexts will have different rules. But these are mine.
Jacket: always, unless the venue is genuinely casual enough that a jacket would create inappropriate distance. And even then, I bring one and decide on site.
Shirt: tucked in with a jacket. If untucked, only a squared-off hem. Always clean, always pressed. Fresh for every performance.
Pocket square: yes, coordinated with at least one other element of my outfit.
Shoes: dedicated performance pair, clean, polished, packed separately.
Tie: context-dependent, decided in advance based on the audience and the event.
Colors: considered as a system, not as individual pieces. More on this in a later post.
These rules free me from decision-making on the day of a performance. I do not stand in front of a hotel room mirror wondering what to wear. The choices are already made. The system is already in place. My mental energy goes where it belongs: to the performance itself.
And that, ultimately, is what all of these small rules are for. Not vanity. Not obsession with appearance. Freedom. The freedom that comes from knowing that the small things are handled, so you can focus entirely on the big ones.