7 Dressing Mistakes that make you look Junior

Looking junior lowers how seriously you are taken, which lowers your negotiating power and your ability to grow the business. The usual culprits are a fully professional look, the wrong makeup, a backpack, poor fit, colourful nails, very high heels, and a handful of behaviours. Each one has a simple correction that reads as established instead.

I used to work as a lawyer on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and I grew up spending my summers at my grandparents' château in the south of France. Today I help female entrepreneurs dress better so they stop being underestimated.

Here are seven mistakes that make you look more junior than you are, and exactly how to correct each one so you are taken seriously.

Does looking too professional make you look junior?

Surprisingly, yes. A fully professional look may have earned you credibility early in a corporate career, but as a business owner you need to show that you lead, not just execute, and a head-to-toe professional outfit reads more like following orders than giving them. It is bland and classic, with little personality or leadership showing through, so the more professional you look, the more you read as a worker bee rather than the person in charge. Even a lawyer or accountant would rather read as a bold one than a generic one. It also signals that you still need to prove you are competent and serious, and proving that is what juniors do. When you are established, you do not doubt it, and you do not assume others doubt it either.

The fix is a classic professional base plus one element, an accessory, a colour, or a shoe, that carries your personality and a bit of statement. Everybody wants to work with someone who is ahead of the curve, and dressing with a deliberate tweak shows that you are that person.

People assume competence based on the amount of certainty you convey when you speak.

What makeup makes you look more senior?

The wrong makeup works against you in both directions. No makeup at all, if you already look young, makes you look even younger. But heavy makeup worn to look older reads as tacky and out of place, because a lot of product subconsciously signals insecurity: that you need to hide your real complexion and lashes, which says you are uncomfortable looking young. Heavy makeup can also read as sexually available, which is rarely the intent. The fix is a no-makeup makeup look, whose only job is to make you look better by enhancing your natural features, not to look younger, older, or sexier. Enhancing your features ages you slightly in the good sense, without looking like you are trying. Someone who enhances rather than hides reads as confident regardless of her age.

It can feel intimidating at first, because it looks like you are wearing almost nothing, but it is the look that gets you taken seriously in an instant.

Does carrying a backpack make you look junior?

Yes, on two counts. A backpack carries a childish, back-to-school connotation, and it also reads as the hard worker hauling heavy things on her back. Looking mature and established is conveyed through ease, and loading everything onto your back works against that status. The fix is a classic work bag. If you genuinely need a backpack for health reasons, and only then, because it makes a real difference when you already look young, choose one that meets every criterion: a classic shape, leather or a quality vegan leather, a muted colour, and spacious enough to carry everything. It can be as large as it needs to be, as long as it meets those criteria.

The point is not the size of the bag, it is the register it sends before you have said a word.

Why does poor fit make you look younger?

If you already look young and your clothes do not fall perfectly, the look reads as wearing your big sister's clothes, or as having outgrown your own. It signals that you have not learned to dress properly yet, which reads as junior, and that you lack the sharp attention to detail an established person would have. People register this fast: in the first moments of meeting you, an ill-fitting piece catches the eye negatively and creates an uneasiness they cannot quite name, which makes you look scruffier and less reliable. Anything that fits badly looks bad regardless of how much it cost, the brand, or the fabric.

The fix is fit, and the surest route to it is tailoring. It matters most in person, with clients, investors, and partners, where every detail is read at once.

Are colourful nails unprofessional?

As fun as they are, colourful nails make you look more junior, because bright colour borrows the visual codes of cartoons, candy wrappers, and the things you see around children. If you already struggle to be taken seriously, they work against you, so keep them for private events rather than professional ones. The fix is a natural nude, close to your own nail colour and discreet, which says you take care of your hands without making your nails the show. If colour on your nails is part of what makes you happy to show up for your business, limit it to a muted cherry red, the one colour that stays professional.

Just know that red carries a slightly sexy connotation, so if you add it on the nails, keep the rest of the outfit extremely classic with nothing sexy elsewhere.

Can very high heels make you look junior?

Counterintuitively, yes. Very high heels, especially pointy ones with a thin heel above 7 cm, read as sexy and convey a dominating kind of power that clashes with a naturally young appearance. If you are short, towering heels can also signal that you need them to feel level with everyone else, which says you do not feel level to begin with. The fix follows the same logic as the makeup: wear what an established woman would wear. Seven centimetres is the maximum height that still reads classy and elegant rather than sexy, and it is also the most flattering for the leg line; past that it can look awkward unless your legs are a specific shape.

Prefer a wider heel to a thin one, since it carries less of a sexy connotation while still adding femininity. And if heels are uncomfortable, 4 cm is still elegant and barely noticeable.

Which behaviours undo a confident outfit?

This last one is not about dressing, but it overrides everything you wear. You can be dressed in the most confident way imaginable, and over-smiling, too much eye contact, a high-pitched voice, upspeak, and filler words will break the spell. Smiling constantly reads as eager to please, so reserve it, ideally for the end of a sentence. The same goes for deep, constant eye contact: a natural amount is to look at someone while you speak and glance away while you form a thought. Filler hedges ("I think," "maybe," "this might just be me") quietly erase your authority, because people read competence from the certainty you convey. It is worth learning from how men tend to speak, with more certainty even when they are not fully sure inside. Upspeak, ending statements as if they were questions, makes you sound unsure.

And the single fastest change, with immediate results, is to lower your pitch to the comfortable bottom of your range. If you run your business in a second language, especially English, you may naturally speak higher there, so carry that lower placement into your business language too.

Five behaviour fixes that read as established