Corp. America Hair Stories: Zoot Suit

In the year 2002, I had no clue about the term “Network Gap”.  Many years later I would learn about it from Meg Garlinghouse , an executive at LinkedIn who devoted many years to studying lots of LinkedIn data.  The name is fairly new but the phenomenon it describes is an old one. Basically, many of your outcomes in life are heavily influenced by who you know and where you met them. Which means that factors like where you grew up, went to school or worked as a young person all play a crucial role in determining future success. Getting the first internship is therefore important because it sets the tone for where else you will work. But whether you get that internship or not is usually a direct result of who you already know. This, of course, is not a new double-bind. I didn’t know what to call it at the time, but I knew that whatever was going on, there was a gap, and I was on the wrong side of it.

Temple's Fox School of Business wasn’t the top choice for many of the big employers in the region with the exception of a few programs. We had a nationally ranked Risk and Insurance program that drew a lot of the local insurance companies, but I thought that was boring. I wasn’t aware that people went to schools with ranked programs to increase the likelihood of landing jobs with select companies. Maybe most don’t know that. All I really knew about corporate anything was what I thought I knew watching TV. I dreamed of taking a train, reading the Wall Street Journal, going to an office building and sitting behind a desk being a business person, but I didn’t really understand what kind of work was being done, let alone how to present myself as capable of doing it. Luckily, Fox offered a one-credit ‘career development’ course to all freshmen. It was mandatory and it was all about resume building, interview preparation and networking skills. There were also sections on business etiquette. Fox understood that many of the students were coming from working-class families and one of the more outspoken administrators, Janis Moore Campbell, PhD, had pushed to get a course added to the curriculum that would improve student preparation and increase their yield for internships and full-time jobs. She succeeded, and her course was running like a well-oiled machine by the time I arrived. 

Janis was fierce. She scared the crap out of everyone. She was in her 40’s when I met her, a milk-chocolate complexioned Black woman who was not only smart but looked like she didn’t take anyone’s nonsense. Her presence made her medium frame and broad shoulders seem so much larger. She kept her silver hair cut really short. She rarely smiled and had a tone and cadence to her voice reminiscent of Nina Simone’s, which was funny because Janis was also a classically trained pianist. She was intense. INTENSE! She was not for the sensitive type. She showed her lack of patience with students’ ineptitude very visibly on her face, usually by raising both eyebrows with a shocked look at buffoonery or an exaggerated eye roll. She did not suffer fools and I knew right away that my long hair and baggy pants were going to irritate her. I initially confused her for the bougie educator types Nana had as customers (my grandmother had a side hustle as a baker and many of her customers were educators or clergy), so I wasn’t really trying to impress her as much as I was trying to avoid her scrutiny. 

In addition to running the boot camp of professional development, Janis wouldn’t hesitate to embarrass any student who tried to assert their dominance or perceived intelligence or who was persistently ill-prepared. She wasn’t one to be tested, in other words. I thought she was a little mean, but had to admit that nothing she said was untrue. I remember her giving me a once over and sort of dismissing me as if I wasn’t worthy. I hadn’t spoken a word but still, I didn’t hold it against her. I dressed the way I did to hide in plain sight, so I couldn’t be mad that it worked. 

The big deal for all sophomores in the Fox School of Business was a networking breakfast where a bunch of companies would come to network with 2nd and 3rd year students for internship opportunities. It was pitched as the most important event of your career at Fox, and it occurred in March. Janis started preparing us during that seminar Freshman year.  It’s a simple premise: All you have to do is wear a nice suit, hand out resumes that have been reviewed and approved by CSPD (Center for Student Professional Development), deliver your 30-second spot which you will have worked on diligently in advance.  Rinse and repeat until you run out of resumes and then wait for those you impressed to call you back. This was where your future was going to happen. 

One thing though: I didn’t have a suit. I had dress clothes that I wore to church and they were nice, but not the suit Janis was talking about. They were pants and a suit jacket that went together. Janis also said the suit had to be navy blue or gray. My pants-jacket combo were different shades of green that complimented each other. 

Something Janis used to say all the time was “Fake it til’ you make it”. I didn’t fully understand the motto, but I was going to try. I’m not sure how, probably a charge on my student Visa (the first of a few bad choices), but I decided I needed to buy a suit. I found a suit shop on Market Street in Center City that had a promotion I’d seen a few times: “Two Suits, two shirts, two ties, two belts, two-hundred dollars”. 

Now here are some important details:  I’m still 130 pounds soaking wet with a 26-inch waist but 44 shoulders: a $200 suit, or better yet, a $75 suit (given everything that comes with $200) isn’t going to be much of a suit. But it looked like they had navy blue and grey, and it fit my budget. I should have turned away, but I didn’t. Insert face into palm. 

I walk into the shop. I’m eventually greeted by a big dude wearing one of those casual suits with matching Stacey Adams shoes, I think the whole ensemble was light blue. He wore tinted glasses and a hat. Almost pimp-like but without the swagger of the pimps I’d seen on TV. Much more subdued. I don’t think he once made eye contact. One of those dudes who always seems to find something more interesting or urgent to look at. “Whatchu need young bull?” In his Philly accent. I’m like, “I need a navy-blue suit for a networking event. I go to Temple University”. 

I don’t know why I didn’t know any better. But I didn’t know anything about suits or about being hustled. I didn’t know that I could be easy money for someone who didn’t really care about my future or maybe didn’t know enough to care. All I know is I should have walked into the store knowing more than I did. 

I assumed I’d only ever seen a single-breasted suit because I would have noticed if it had two of something, right. So when he says “single or double?”, I’m certain it’s single. Then he asks me how many buttons. I’m like, “I don’t know, how many should it have?'' and he sort of casually mentions this seven-button suit. I’m thinking, “Maybe the more buttons the better”. So I’m like, “Is that what business people wear?” and he says, “Absolutely, young bull. I sell these suits to business people all the time”. 

So I trusted him. He sells suits. It was navy blue and the suit man who calls me a young bull in a familiar way while keeping an eye out for dangerous passersby (or whatever reason he can’t look at me) must be trustworthy, so I try on the suit. The trusty suit man explains that all the suits are pre-sized and because of my shoulder size, the pants are a 36”, but he says he’ll take them in 10” and make a few adjustments to make it work. I was swimming in this thing, but I’m paying $200 so I’m thinking he’s going to go into the back and really make it happen with some tailoring. He gives me a claim ticket and a date 7-10 days out. There was a second suit in the deal, but I don’t remember that one. It couldn’t have been better but clearly no worse. 

When I go to pick up this thing, they had done some work, but whereas my imagination had this thing fitting like a glove, or like the tailored suits in the photos Janis had showed us, in reality I was wearing a navy-blue zoot suit that was made for a much taller, much larger man, with some shoddy stitch work here and there to make it seem like it should fit. I think I still needed a belt because there is only so much taking in you can do. I remember looking at these giant pant legs converging onto this tiny waist. I could fit both legs in one pant leg. The jacket had these tiny lapels and SEVEN FREAKING BUTTONS. It was long and it was heavy and it was wrong. It was SO wrong … but it was navy blue.

I had a white shirt. I had one of Grandpa’s ties and I took my hair out of braids and put it into a ponytail, because that felt like the more professional thing to do. There was no version of braids I could imagine working. I remember getting ready and seeing Oladunni Mitchell (Dunni for short who I'd been dating for about a year at this point) before the event. She looked me up and down, skeptically, and asked me if I was sure this was the type of suit I was supposed to wear.  

I’m like, “The suit man said yes”.

Dunni doesn’t know how to feign anything. Not excitement. Can’t keep a secret, no matter the timing. She just looks at me and instead of asking the question she says, “That does not look like the type of suit you're supposed to wear. That looks like one of Steve Harvey’s suits”. 

We hadn’t been together that long and I sure as hell wasn’t thinking it was going to last at this moment. I’m thinking, ‘I need to have my head right for this networking lunch,’ while she’s thinking, ‘This idiot?’ This will be a recurring theme in our relationship. Dunni has never been one to support something she doesn’t understand, which makes her support significantly more meaningful. But more on that later. 

I get myself together, check my teeth, make sure there is sheen on my ponytail. Then I go to the event and honestly, I don’t remember much. I was nervous and it’s a blur. I went and struck out so bad that I blocked it out of my memory. Or Janis turned me away for having five too many buttons on my suit jacket. Either way, I got the feedback. I must have looked so foolish. Ponytail? Zoot suit? All I was missing was a fedora. 

And what a setback. I started my college credit-card debt story on a purchase that didn’t really help me move forward. I knew broke dudes who bought clothes they didn’t need or didn’t help their situation. But a navy-blue zoot suit? I couldn’t even use this thing for jazz performances. I guess I could use the pant legs as a twin bed sheet if the struggle got real. This is how I showed up to make my first impression to get an internship in corporate America. I didn’t get any calls and at this point, getting to the right side of the network gap was a bridge too far. To figure this out, I was going to need to figure out what Janis really meant by “fake it til’ you make it”.