This is post four hundred and five, and it is the last post in the Appearance and Presentation section of this blog. Before I close this chapter, I need to address the objection I have heard more than any other when I talk about the visual side of performance.
The objection goes like this: “All this attention to appearance is vanity. The audience cares about the performance, not about what you are wearing. Substance over style. If the magic is good enough, none of this matters.”
I understand this objection. I held this belief for a long time. And I was wrong.
Where the Objection Comes From
The substance-over-style argument is appealing because it contains a grain of truth. A terrible performer in a beautiful suit is still a terrible performer. No amount of polish can compensate for bad material, poor technique, or a fundamental lack of connection with the audience. If you are choosing between investing time in your appearance and investing time in your craft, invest in your craft. That is not in question.
The error in the argument is the assumption that it is an either-or choice. That caring about your appearance means you care less about your substance. That attention to visual detail comes at the expense of attention to performance quality.
In my experience, the opposite is true. The performers who are most meticulous about their appearance are also the most meticulous about their craft. The mindset that says “every detail matters” does not confine itself to clothing. Conversely, “the audience will not notice” becomes a justification for cutting corners in one area after another, until the entire performance is a collection of things the audience supposedly will not notice but absolutely does.
The Respect Argument
Here is the reframe that changed my thinking.
Caring about your appearance is not about you. It is about the audience.
When someone shows up to watch you perform, they have made a choice. They are giving you something they cannot get back: their time and their attention. At a corporate event, they may not have chosen to be there — but they are there, and their attention is a gift whether they are giving it voluntarily or not. At a private event, they have likely dressed up, traveled, and organized their evening around being present.
How you show up in return is a statement about how much you value that gift.
Showing up polished — clean, pressed, coordinated, considered — says: I prepared for you. I thought about this. I took the time. You are worth the effort.
Showing up disheveled — wrinkled, uncoordinated, visibly unrehearsed in your appearance — says: I did not think about you. I was focused on my own experience. Your impression of me was not a priority.
These are not conscious messages. Nobody walks on stage thinking, “I am now going to disrespect my audience by wearing a wrinkled shirt.” And nobody in the audience thinks, “This performer’s wrinkled shirt indicates a lack of respect for my time.” But the message transmits anyway, below the level of conscious thought, through the same channels that have been transmitting status, intention, and social signals for as long as humans have existed.
Fitzkee understood this with a clarity that still impresses me. He wrote that performers should always appear in the latest cut and style, with fresh linens and freshly cleaned and pressed clothing, carefully groomed, with clean hands and manicured fingernails and spotless shoes. Not because Fitzkee was vain. Because Fitzkee understood that the audience’s experience begins before the first word is spoken, and every visual signal contributes to or detracts from that experience.
He wrote this in the 1940s. It has not become less true.
What I Learned from the Consulting World
My consulting career taught me this principle long before I applied it to performance. In the consulting world, how you present yourself is understood to be a form of communication. Not the most important form — your analysis and recommendations matter more — but a form that sets the context for everything that follows.
I remember a senior partner telling me early in my career: “When you walk into a client’s office, they have already formed an impression of you before you open your mouth. Your job is to make sure that impression does not contradict the message you are about to deliver.” If you are selling strategic clarity and confident decision-making, you cannot show up looking like you made your own decisions that morning in a rush.
This is not about wealth or fashion or keeping up with trends. It is about congruence. Does your appearance match the level of preparation and professionalism you are claiming to offer? If you say your performance is polished, does your appearance confirm that claim? If you say you care about details, are the details of your appearance cared for?
The audience performs this congruence check automatically. They do not know they are doing it. But the results influence their receptiveness to everything that follows.
The Harlan Principle: Everything Is Costume
Harlan says something in his lecture that I have quoted before and will quote again because it is one of the most useful reframes I have encountered: “Anything that you wear in front of an audience is a costume.”
This is not a metaphor. The moment you step on stage, every visual element becomes part of the show. Your glasses are costume. Your shoes are costume. Your watch is costume.
Understanding this transforms how you think about getting dressed. You are not getting dressed. You are designing a character’s appearance. And every choice either supports the character or undermines it.
The character I have developed for my performances — the analytical, warm, slightly surprised consultant who keeps discovering impossible things — needs to look like an intelligent professional who is also approachable and human. Too formal, and the warmth is lost. Too casual, and the authority is lost. The visual presentation needs to hit a specific point on the spectrum, and hitting that point requires deliberate thought.
This is not vanity. This is design.
The Preparation Ritual
The evening before a show, I lay out my complete performance outfit and check each item for condition. I set out my props on the table cloth and look at the complete visual arrangement. I check my glasses for smudges and reflections under the strongest light available. The whole ritual takes fifteen minutes. It eliminates an entire category of anxiety on the day of the performance.
Fitzkee wrote that when the mechanics of performance become habitual, they free the conscious mind for selling the trick. The same applies to appearance preparation. When the decisions are made in advance, the conscious mind is freed for what actually matters: the human connection that happens on stage.
The Audience Does Not Care About You
I mean this in the kindest possible way. The audience did not come to see your outfit. They did not come to admire your color coordination or your pocket square or your non-reflective lens coating. They came to be entertained. To feel something. To experience something they have not experienced before.
Your appearance serves this goal by getting out of the way.
When your appearance is polished and considered, it becomes invisible. The audience does not notice it because there is nothing to notice. There are no distractions, no incongruities, no visual elements that pull attention away from the performance itself. Your appearance fades into the background, exactly where it belongs, and the audience sees only the show.
When your appearance is not polished, it becomes visible. A wrinkled collar, mismatched colors, scuffed shoes, reflective glasses — each of these is a tiny snag that catches the audience’s attention for a fraction of a second. Individually, they are insignificant. Collectively, over the course of a thirty-minute performance, they create a pattern of micro-distractions that erodes the audience’s immersion.
The paradox of appearance in performance is that the goal is invisibility. You invest time and thought in your visual presentation so that the audience never has to think about it. The work is in the preparation. The result is absence — the absence of distraction, the absence of incongruity, the absence of any visual element that competes with the performance for attention.
What This Section Has Been About
Every post in this section is about the same thing: removing barriers between you and the audience. A reflection on your glasses is a barrier. A sloppy shirt is a barrier. Poor posture is a barrier. Clashing colors are a barrier. Every one of these is a small wall between you and the people you are trying to reach. And every one of them is removable.
The performers who reach the highest levels of their craft are the ones who remove every barrier they can find. Because they respect the audience enough to clear the path.
The Capstone Lesson
If I had to distill everything I have learned about appearance and presentation into a single principle, it would be this:
Your appearance is not about you looking good. It is about the audience feeling good.
When you look polished, the audience feels cared for. When you look prepared, the audience feels safe. When every visual element is in harmony, the audience feels that they are in the hands of someone who thinks about details, who plans ahead, who does not leave things to chance.
And when the audience feels cared for, safe, and in good hands — that is when they give you the thing every performer needs to do their best work. They give you their trust. Their openness. Their willingness to go on a journey with you.
Harlan puts it beautifully: “The audience can now relax because they know they are in good hands.” That is the goal. Not admiration of your outfit. Relaxation. Trust. The feeling that the person on stage has everything under control and the audience can surrender to the experience.
Everything in this section — every post about every small detail — has been in service of that single outcome. Remove the barriers. Earn the trust. Let the audience relax.
The rest is performance.
Looking Forward
This is the close of the Appearance and Presentation section, but it is not the end of the Production and Environment conversation. The principles carry forward. The details matter. The audience’s experience is shaped by everything they see, hear, and feel, not just what you do and say.
Fitzkee wrote in the 1940s that 99 percent of magic performances were poor or mediocre by the entertainment standards of his era. His prescription was to study the best entertainers in all fields and to design your product to meet the standards set by the buying public. That prescription still holds. The standard for visual presentation today is set by TED speakers, Netflix specials, and corporate keynotes. The audience carries that standard with them into your performance space, whether they articulate it or not.
The good news is that meeting the standard does not require a large budget. It requires attention. A few deliberate choices about clothing, grooming, color, and posture. The willingness to look at yourself from the outside and fix what does not serve the audience’s experience.
It requires, in the end, respect. Respect for the audience. Respect for the craft. Respect for the occasion.
That is not vanity. That is professionalism. And professionalism, in my experience, is one of the most reliable predictors of whether an audience will trust you enough to let the magic happen.
Four hundred and five posts. The journey continues.