The bottom line is, if you truly want to present a business wardrobe image that makes the all-important fashion statement: “I look exactly like everybody else in American business,” you damn well better dress the way John T. Molloy says you should. So listen up.

Basically, the American businessman should dress as though he recently lost his entire family in a tragic boat explosion. We are talking about a subdued look here. This doesn’t mean that you have no choice in what you wear. Au contraire. For example, you may wear two completely different colors of woolen suit: you may wear a dark gray woolen suit, or, if you want to get really crazy, you may wear a dark blue woolen suit.

You may not wear a brown, green, or (God forbid) plaid polyester suit, because everybody will think you just tromped into town from rural Louisiana to attend the Live Bait Show. Men wearing these colors are very likely to be passed over for promotion, as is shown by this actual simulation of a scene that for all we know probably occurs every day in major corporations:

(We are in the office of the president, who is meeting with a vice-president to decide whom to promote to director of the Research Department.)

VICE-PRESIDENT: Well, there’s Barkley, of course. He’s the one who came up with the way to turn discarded wads of Kleenex into gold using only common household ingredients.

PRESIDENT: What color suit does he wear?

VICE-PRESIDENT: Brown.

PRESIDENT: Well forget him.

Your shirt should be white, and it should not have the name “Earl” embroidered anywhere on it.

The purpose of your tie is to suggest that you attended an Ivy League university, so the key is to select the right pattern.

Face southwest, with the long end of the tie hanging down casually from your right hand (the audience’s left hand). Now bring the short end of the tie around the back of your neck and let it hang down your front, so that it just touches the scar you got ironing shirts naked. Now take the “wide” (or “long”) end of the tie and pass it three times around the “short” (or “long”) end, then up through the loop. (What do you mean, “What loop?” Check again!) Now pull everything snug, unless you have forgotten to put on a shirt, in which case you had best remove the tie, by force if necessary.

These are a “must” in most business situations. If you use “Odor Eaters,” they should be beige or navy blue.

No area of the male business wardrobe is as important as his underwear. Next time you’re in a room with a group of successful executives, take a few moments to examine their under-wear, and you’ll find they’re all wearing underwear with proven “power patterns” that have been shown in scientific tests to create a feeling of awe and respect in others.

In situations where you really need to enhance your power image, you should wear your power underwear outside your pants. In extreme situations, such as you are arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court, you will want to wear them in an even more visible location, such as on your head.

In deciding how to dress for business, women must understand certain basic facts, the foremost being that all men are scum. If a woman, no matter how competent, gives off the slightest hint that she has any feelings that could be remotely construed as sexual, this is all that the men in her corporation will ever think about. That’s not just my opinion: it is a scientific finding based on years of extensively hanging around with guys and talking.

What does this mean, in terms of your business wardrobe? It means you want to adopt a fashion look that has become the standard for the woman on the corporate fast track, a look that can best be described as: Modified Nun. All we’ve really done to the basic nun look is remove the headpiece. This conveys to the men in your corporation that you are not a sex object, but an authority figure who must be taken seriously because at any moment you might strike them on the hands with a ruler.

This is mandatory. I realize you women hate to be constantly shelling out money for a product manufactured by an industry that pays its scientists huge bonuses if they can develop fibers even weaker than the ones they currently use. I realize you go around saying: “If we can land a man on the moon, why can’t we develop pantyhose that will last longer than a small vanilla cone on a hot day?” Well I’m sorry, but rules are rules. Also, we haven’t landed a man on the moon for a very long time now, and we probably never will again unless something urgent comes up, such as the Defense Department suspects there are Cuban troops up there.

A good rule of thumb is: if you can stick a pin more than a quarter inch into your face and still not feel anything, you’re wearing too much makeup for the business environment. Or else you have a medical problem.

The ideal shoe for the career woman is the basic pump with a “sensible” heel, by which I mean a heel that will just fit through the holes in a standard street grate.

What makes a good salesperson? In an effort to answer that question, I asked my research associates to interview the top 100 salespeople, based on dollar volume, in the nation. Naturally, my associates refused to do this. I wouldn’t have done it either. Life is hard enough without voluntarily subjecting yourself to top salespeople.

What we can learn from this research is that if you want to become a top salesperson, you must develop drive, determination, and persistence such that people do not wish to be within thousands of yards of you. How can you become this kind of person? By BELIEVING IN YOURSELF. You must develop a FAITH IN YOUR OWN ABILITIES so strong that YOU DON’T FEEL THE LEAST BIT EMBARRASSED ABOUT ACTING LIKE A SCUZZBAG. You don’t get this kind of confidence from other people; it has to COME FROM WITHIN, from having a comprehensive, meaningful, and deep-rooted PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE based on TIMELESS TRUTHS, which you get from MOTIVATIONAL BOOKS THAT ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE TAPES COSTING $49.95 PER SET.

Without question, the number-one cassette thinker in the world today is Dr. Lance M. Canker, the man whose famous motivational tape “Dare to Be a jerk” is believed to be the single biggest factor in the historic decision by Coca-Cola executives to change the Coke formula so it tasted more like children’s cough syrup. Dr. Canker, who has had a lifelong interest in motivational thinking ever since 1963, when he had his name legally changed from “Lance Canker” to “Dr. Lance Canker,” has written a number of self-help books, including the hugely popular God, Are You Fat! But his greatest contribution to the business world is his classic how-to-sell book Buy This Book or You’ll Starve to Death, which is filled with true-life inspirational anecdotes such as these:

Not long ago, I gave a dinner party attended by every major Western head of state and a young man I’ll call